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MAYNOOTH COLLEGE
“This college was founded in 1795 for the education
of the Irish priesthood “The present buildings were built
after designs by Welby Pugin ‘They accommodate 800
students, and the course of training requires eight years.
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———
Corrarenr, 1904. wr
Joun D. Mommra & Company
Sa
EDITORIAL BOARD
AND ADVISORY COMMITTEE
‘THE HON. JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P., Entror-m-Cmer
Maverice Francis Ecan, LL.D.
of the Catholic University,
Washington
Lapy Grecory
Sranpisu O’Grapy
D. J. O’DonocavE
Prof. F. N. Rostnson, of Har-
vard University
W. P. Ryan
Dovetas Hype, LL.D.
James Jerrrey Rocue, LL.D.
Editor The Pilot
G. W. Russztt (“ A. E.”)
STEPHEN Gwynn -
Prof. W. P. Tren, of Columbia
University
Prof. H. 8. Pancoasr
Joun E. Repmonp, M.P.
Craztes We1su, Managing Editor
Author of ‘The Life of John Newbery ’ (Goldsmith’s friend and publisher).
SPECIAL ARTICLES ann THEIR WRITERS
Ietsa LITERATURE. .
Mopren Irish Portry
EARLY IRISH LITERATURE
IRELAND'8 INFLUENCE ON
PEAN LITERATURE .
Imisn Novets .
Iniea Farry ann Forx Tass .
Tue Irisn Scnoor or Oratory
Tue Sunnivess OF [RISH LIFE .
Trtsa Wir anp Humor
Tue IRISH LITERARY THEATER .
. Justin McCarthy
. William Butler Yeats
. Douglas Hyde, LL.D.
Evro-
. Dr. George Sigerson
. Maurice Francis Egan, LL.D.
. Charles Welsh
. J. F. Taylor, K.C.
. Michael MacDonagh
. D. J. O'Donoghue
. Stephen Gwynn
A Guance AT IRELAND 's History . Charles Welsh
Srezet Sones anp BALLADS AND Anonymous VERSE
BIOGRAPHIES ann LITERARY APPRECIATIONS
BY
Grorcz W. Russext (“A.E.”) W. B. Yuars
W. P. Ryan
Cuaries WELSH
Doveras Hypg, LL.D.
T. W. Rottzston
G. Barnetr Suits
H.C. Bunnzr
G. A. GREENE
8. J. Ricnarpson
STANDISR O’Gravy
D. J. ODonocuvz
Austix Dosson
Dr. G. Siazrson
N. P. Wiruis
Lionzt Jounson
148942
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MODERN IRISH POETRY.
Tue Irish Celt is sociable, as may be known from his
proverb, “ It is better to be quarreling than to be lonely,”
and the Irish poets of the nineteenth century have made
songs abundantly when friends and rebels have been at
hand to applaud. The Irish poets of the eighteenth cen-
tary found both at a Limerick hostelry, above whose door
was written a rhyming welcome in Gaelic to all passing
poets, whether their pockets were full or empty. Its
owner, himself a famous poet, entertained his fellows as
long as his money lasted, and then took to minding the
hens and chickens of an old peasant woman for a living,
and ended his days in rags, but not, one imagines, with-
out content. Among his friends and guests had been
Red O’S8ullivan, Gaelic O'Sullivan, blind O’Heffernan, and
many another, and their songs had made the people,
crushed by the disasters of the Boyne and Aughrim, re-
member their ancient greatness,
The bardic order, with its perfect artifice and imperfect
art, had gone down in the wars of the seventeenth century,
and poetry had found shelter amid the turf smoke of the
cabins. The powers that history commemorates are but
the coarse effects of influences delicate and vague as the
beginning of twilight, and these influences were to be
woven like a web about the hearts of men by farm laborers,
peddlers, potato diggers, hedge schoolmasters, and grind-
ers at the quern, poor wastrels who put the troubles of their
native land, or their own happy or unhappy loves, into
songs of an extreme beauty. But in the midst of this
beauty was a flitting incoherence, a fitful dying out of the
sense, as though the passion had become too great for
words, ag must needs be when life is the master and not
the slave of the singer.
English-speaking Ireland had meanwhile no poetic voice,
for Goldsmith had chosen to celebrate English scenery and
manners; and Swift was but an Irishman by what Mr. Bal-
four has called the visitation of God, and much against
his will; and Congreve by education and early associa-
tion; while Parnell, Denham, and Roscommon were poets
vii
viii MODERN IRISH POETRY.
but to their own time. Nor did the coming with the new
century of the fame of Moore set the balance even, for his
Irish melodies are too often artificial and mechanical in
their style when separated from the music that gave them
wings. Whatever he had of high poetry is in ‘The Light
of Other Days,’ and in ‘ At the Mid Hour of Night,’ which
express what Matthew Arnold has taught us to call “ the
Celtic melancholy,” with so much of delicate beauty in the
meaning and in the wavering or steady rhythm that one
knows not where to find their like in literature. His more
artificial and mechanical verse, because of the ancient
music that makes it seem natural and vivid, and because
it has remembered so many beloved names and events and
places, has had the influence which might have belonged to
these exquisite verses had he written none but these.
An honest style did not come into English-speaking Ire-
land until Callanan wrote three or four naive translations
from the Gaelic. ‘Shule Aroon’ and ‘ Kathleen O’More’
had indeed been written for a good while, but had no more
influence than Moore’s best verses. Now, however, the lead
of Callanan was followed by a number of translators, and
they in turn by the poets of Young Ireland, who mingled
a little learned from the Gaelic ballad writers with a great
deal learned from Scott, Macaulay, and Campbell, and
turned poetry once again into a principal means for
spreading ideas of nationality and patriotism. They were
full of earnestness, but never understand that, though a
poet may govern his life by his enthusiasms, he must, when
he sits down at his desk, but use them as the potter the
clay. Their thoughts were a little insincere, because they
lived in the half-illusions of their admirable ideals; and
their rhythms not seldom mechanical, because their pur-
pose was served when they had satisfied the dull ears of
the common man. They had no time to listen to the voice
of the insatiable artist, who stands erect, or lies asleep
waiting until a breath arouses him, in the heart of every
craftsman. Life was their master, as it had been the mas-
ter of the poets who gathered in the Limerick hostelry,
though it conquered them not by unreasoned love for a
woman, or for native land, but by reasoned enthusiasm,
and practical energy. No man was more sincere, no man
MODERN IRISH POETRY. ix’
had a less mechanical mind than Thomas Davis, and yet
he is often a little insincere and mechanical in his verse.
When he sat down to write he had so great a desire to
make the peasantry courageous and powerful that he half
believed them already “the finest peasantry upon the
earth,” and wrote not a few such verses as
“Lead him to fight for native land,
His is no courage cold and wary ;
The troops live not that could withstand
The headlong charge of Tipperary "—
and to-day we are paying the reckoning with much bom-
bast. His little book has many things of this kind, and
yet we honor it for its public spirit, and recognize its pow-
erful influence with gratitude. He was in the main an
orator influencing men’s acts, and not a poet shaping their
emotions, and the bulk of his influence has been good. He
was, indeed, a poet of much tenderness in the simple love-
songs ‘ The Marriage,’ ‘ A Plea for Love, and ‘ Mary Bhan
Astor,’ and, but for his ideal of a fisherman defying a
foreign soldiery, would have been as good in ‘ The Boat-
man of Kinsale’; and once or twice when he touched upon
some historic sorrow he forgot his hopes for the future and
his lessons for the present, and made moving verse.
His contemporary, Clarence Mangan, kept out of public
life and its half-illusions by a passion for books, and for
drink and opium, made an imaginative and powerful style.
He translated from the German, and imitated Oriental
poetry, but little that he did on any but Irish subjects has
a lasting interest. He is usually classed with the Young
Ireland poets, because he contributed to their periodi-
cals and shared their political views; but his style was
formed before their movement began, and he found it the
more easy for this reason, perhaps, to give sincere expres-
sion to the mood which he had chosen, the only sincerity
literature knows of; and with happiness and cultivation
might have displaced Moore. But as it was, whenever he
had no fine ancient song to inspire him, he fell into rhetoric
which was only lifted out of commonplace by an arid in-
tensity. In his ‘Irish National Hymn, ‘Soul and Coun-
try,’ and the like, we look into a mind full of parched
sands where the sweet dews have never fallen. A miser-
x MODERN IRISH POETRY.
able man may think well and express himself with great
vehemence, but he cannot make beautiful things, for Aph-
rodite never rises from any but a tide of joy. Mangan
knew nothing of the happiness of the outer man, and it
was only when prolonging the tragic exultation of some
dead bard that he knew the unearthly happiness which
clouds the outer man with sorrow, and is the fountain of
impassioned art. Like those who had gone before him, he
was the slave of life, for he had nothing of the self-know]-
edge, the power of selection, the harmony of mind, which
enables the poet to be its master, and to mold the world
to a trumpet for his lips. But O’Hussey’s Ode over his
outcast chief must live for generations because of the
passion that moves through its powerful images and its
mournful, wayward, and fierce rhythms.
‘Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the untamable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
‘his sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.”
Edward Walsh, a village schoolmaster, who hovered,
like Mangan, on the edge of the Young Ireland movement,
did many beautiful translations from the Gaelic; and Mi-
chael Doheny, while out “on his keeping” in the moun-
tains after the collapse at Ballingarry, made one of the
most moving of ballads; but in the main the poets who
gathered about Thomas Davis, and whose work has come
down to us in ‘ The Spirit of the Nation,’ were of practical
and political, not of literary, importance.
Meanwhile Samuel Ferguson, William Allingham, and
Aubrey de Vere were working apart from politics; Fer-
guson selecting his subjects from the traditions of the
bardic age, and Allingham from those of his native Bally-
shannon, and Aubrey de Vere wavering between Eng-
lish, Irish, and Catholic tradition. They were wiser than
Young Ireland in the choice of their models, for, while
drawing not less from purely Irish sources, they turned to
the great poets of the world, Aubrey de Vere owing some-
thing of his gravity to Wordsworth, Ferguson much of his
simplicity to Homer, while Allingham had trained an ear,
too delicate to catch the tune of but a single master, upon
MODERN IRISH POETRY. xi
the lyric poetry of many lands. Allingham was the best
artist, but Ferguson had the more ample imagination, the
more epic aim. He had not the subtlety of feeling, the
variety of cadence of a great lyric poet, but he has touched,
here and there, an epic vastness and naiveté, as in the de-
scription in ‘Congal’ of the mire-stiffened mantle of the
giant specter Mananan mac Lir, striking against his calves
with as loud a noise as the mainsail of a ship makes,
“when with the coil of all its ropes it beat the sounding
mast.” He is frequently dull, for he often lacked the
“minutely appropriate words” necessary to embody
those fine changes of feeling which enthrall the attention;
but his sense of weight and size, of action and tumult, has
set him apart and solitary, an epic figure in a lyric age.
Allingham, whose pleasant destiny has made him the
poet of his native town, and put ‘The Winding Banks of
Erne’ into the mouths of the ballad singers of Ballyshan-
non, is, on the other hand, a master of “ minutely appro-
priate words,” and can wring from the luxurious sadness
of the lover, from the austere sadness of old age, the last
golden drop of beauty; but amid action and tumult he can
but fold his hands. He is the poet of the melancholy peas-
antry of the West, and, as years go on, and voluminous
histories and copious romances drop under the horizon,
will take his place among those minor immortals who have
put their souls into little songs to humble the proud.
The poetry of Aubrey de Vere has less architecture than
the poetry of Ferguson and Allingham, and more medita-
tion. Indeed, his few but ever memorable successes are en-
chanted islands in gray seas of stately impersonal reverie
and description, which drift by and leave no definite rec-
ollection. One needs, perhaps, to perfectly enjoy him, a
Dominican habit, a cloister, and a breviary.
These three poets published much of their best work
before and during the Fenian movement, which, like
Young Ireland, had its poets, though but a small number.
Charles Kickham, one of the “triumvirate” that con-
trolled it in Ireland; John Casey, a clerk in a flour mill;
and Ellen O’Leary, the sister of Mr. John O’Leary, were
at times very excellent. Their verse lacks, curiously
enough, the oratorical vehemence of Young Ireland, and is
xii MODERN IRISH POETRY.
plaintive and idyllic. The agrarian movement that fol-
lowed produced but little poetry, and of that little all is
forgotten but a vehement poem by Fanny Parnell and a
couple of songs by T. D. Sullivan, who is a good song
writer, though not, as the writer has read on an election
placard, “one of the greatest poets who ever moved the
heart of man.” But while Nationalist verse has ceased to
be a portion of the propaganda of a party, it has been
written, and is being written, under the influence of the
Nationalist newspapers and of Young Ireland societies
and the like. With an exacting conscience, and better
models than Thomas Moore and the Young Irelanders,
such beautiful enthusiasm could not fail to make some
beautiful verses. But, as things are, the rhythms are me-
chanical, and the metaphors conventional; and inspiration
is too often worshiped as a Familiar who labors while
you sleep, or forget, or do many worthy things which are
not spiritual things.
For the most part, the Irishman of our times loves go
deeply those arts which build up a gallant personality,
rapid writing, ready talking, effective speaking to crowds,
that he has no thought for the arts which consume the per-
sonality in solitude. He loves the mortal arts which have
given him a lure to take the hearts of men, and shrinks
from the immortal, which could but divide him from his
fellows. And in this century, he who does not strive to be
a perfect craftsman achieves nothing. The poor peasant of
the eighteenth century could make fine ballads by abandon-
ing himself to the joy or sorrow of the moment, as the reeds
abandon themselves to the wind which sighs through them,
because he had about him a world where all was old enough
to be steeped in emotion. But we cannot take to ourselves,
by merely thrusting out our hands, all we need of pomp
and symbol, and if we have not the desire of artistic per-
fection for an ark, the deluge of incoherence, vulgarity,
and triviality will pass over our heads. If we had no other
symbols but the tumult of the sea, the rusted gold of the
thatch, the redness of the quicken-berry, and had never
known the rhetoric of the platform and of the newspaper,
we could do without laborious selection and rejection; but,
even then, though we might do much that would be delight-
MODERN IRISH POETRY. xiii
ful, that would inspire coming times, it would not have the
manner of the greatest poetry.
Here and there, the Nationalist newspapers and the
Young Ireland societies have trained a writer who, though
busy with the old models, has some imaginative energy;
while the more literary writers, the successors of Alling-
ham and Ferguson and De Vere, are generally more
anxious to influence and understand Irish thought than
any of their predecessors who did not take the sub-
stance of their poetry from politics. They are distin-
guished too by their deliberate art, and by their preoc-
cupation with spiritual passions and memories.
The poetry of Lionel Johnson and Mrs. Hinkson is
Catholic and devout, but Lionel Johnson’s is lofty and
austere, and like De Vere’s never long forgets the
greatness of his Church and the interior life whose expres-
sion it is, while Mrs. Hinkson is happiest when she em-
bodies emotions, that have the innocence of childhood, in
symbols and metaphors from the green world about her.
She has no reverie nor speculation, but a devout tenderness
like that of St. Francis for weak instinctive things, old
gardeners, old fishermen, birds among the leaves, birds
tossed upon the waters. Miss Hopper belongs to that
school of writers which embodies passions, that are not the
less spiritual because no Church has put them into prayers,
in stories and symbols from old Celtic poetry and my-
thology. The poetry of “A. E.,” at its best, finds its sym-
bols and its stories in the soul itself, and has a more disem-
bodied ecstasy than any poetry of our time. He is the
chief poet of the school of Irish mystics, in which there are
many poets besides many who have heard the words, “ If
ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,” and
thought the labors that bring the mystic vision more im-
portant than the labors of any craft.
Mr. Herbert Trench and Mrs. Shorter and “Moira
O'Neill ” are more interested in the picturesqueness of the
world than in religion. Mr. Trench and Mrs. Shorter have
put old Irish stories into vigorous modern rhyme, and have
written, the one in her ‘ Ceann dubh Deelish ’ and the other
in ‘Come, Let Us Make Love Deathless,’ lyrics that should
become a lasting part of Irish lyric poetry. “ Moira
xiv MODERN IRISH POETRY.
O'Neill ” has written pretty lyrics of Antrim life; but one
discovers that Mrs. Hinkson or Miss Hopper, although
their work is probably less popular, come nearer to the
peasant passion, when one compares their work and hers
with that Gaelic song translated so beautifully by Dr.
Sigerson, where a ragged man of the roads, having lost all
else, is yet thankful for “the great love gift of sorrow,”
or with many songs translated by Dr. Hyde in his ‘ Love
Songs of Connacht,’ or by Lady Gregory in her ‘ Poets and
Dreamers.’
Except some few Catholic and mystical poets and Pro-
fessor Dowden in one or two poems, no Irishman living in
Ireland has sung excellently of any but a theme from Irish
experience, Irish history, or Irish tradition. Trinity Col-
lege, which desires to be English, has been the mother of
many verse writers and of few poets; and this can only be
because she has set herself against the national genius,
and taught her children to imitate alien styles and choose
out alien themes, for it is not possible to believe that the
educated Irishman alone is prosaic and uninventive. Her
few poets have been awakened by the influence of the farm
laborers, potato diggers, peddlers, and hedge schoolmas-
ters of the eighteenth century, and their imitators in this,
and not by a scholastic life, which, for reasons easy for all
to understand and for many to forgive, has refused the
ideals of Ireland, while those of England are but far-off
murmurs. An enemy to all enthusiasms, because all enthu-
siasms seemed her enemies, she has taught her children to
look neither to the world about them, nor into their own
souls, where some dangerous fire might slumber.
To remember that in Ireland the professional and
landed classes have been through the mold of Trinity Col-
lege or of English universities, and are ignorant of the
very names of the best Irish writers, is to know how
strong a wind blows from the ancient legends of Ireland,
how vigorous an impulse to create is in her heart to-day.
Deserted by the classes from among whom have come the
bulk of the world’s intellect, she struggles on, gradually
ridding herself of incoherence and triviality, and slowly
building up a literature in English which, whether im-
portant or unimportant, grows always more unlike others;
MODERN IRISH POETRY. xv
nor does it seem as if she would long lack a living litera-
ture in Gaelic, for the movement for the preservation of
Gaelic, which has been so much more successful than any-
body foresaw, has already its poets. Dr. Hyde has written
Gaelic poems which pass from mouth to mouth in the west
of Ireland. The country people have themselves fitted
them to ancient airs, and many that can neither read nor
write sing them in Donegal and Connemara and Galway.
I have, indeed, but little doubt that Ireland, communing
with herself in Gaelic more and more, but speaking to
foreign countries in English, will lead many that are sick
with theories and with trivial emotion, to some sweet well-
waters of primeval poetry.
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ANCIENT IRISH COSTUMES
Costumes of the Ollamhs and Bards. From Meyrick and Smith's
“Costumes of the Inhabitants of the British /slands’*
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IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.
Tue history of Ireland and of the Irish people dates
from a very remote antiquity; indeed, its beginnings are
lost in the twilight of fable, but its language, as Mr. Doug-
las Hyde says, “has left the clearest, most luminous, and
most consecutive literary track behind it of any of the ver-
nacular tongues,” excepting the Greek.
Linguistically speaking, the Celtic people are a branch
of the great Aryan race. The Irish are part of a vast Indo-
European family which countless ages ago spread to the
West over a great part of Europe. The Gaelic language
has roots which go far down toward the parent stock; its
literature, consequently, is of the utmost interest and value
to those who seek to read the riddle of the past and to push
back the horizon of knowledge concerning it. The reader
will not, therefore, be surprised to learn that the Irish fairy
tales and folk stories are among the oldest of those of
any of the European races. “ Of all the traces that man in
his earliest period has left behind him ” says Mr. Douglas
Hyde in his ‘ Beside the Fire, “there is nothing except
a few drilled stones or flint arrowheads that approaches the
antiquity of these tales.”
And although they have many counterparts in other
languages, which would seem to indicate a common origin
in the far off past, notably in Oriental folk lore, the
spirit of the race is enshrined in them in a more character-
istic and striking degree, perhaps, than in the fairy tales
and folk lore of any other country. This is doubtless due
to their preservation in the ancient Gaelic; to the fact that
the wandering bard has lingered longer in Ireland than
elsewhere, and to the fact that the professional story-teller,
although fast disappearing, is not yet entirely extinct in
that country.
Story-telling has always been a favorite amusement of
the Celtic race. In ancient times the professional story-
tellers were classified, and were called, according to their
rank, ollaves, shannachies, filés, or bards. Their duty was
to recite old tales, poems, and descriptions of historical
events in prose or verse at the festive gatherings of the
xvii
xviii IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.
people. They were especially educated and trained for
this profession, which was looked upon as a dignified and
important one, and they were treated with consideration
and amply rewarded wherever they went.
It is recorded how the story-tellers used to gather to-
gether of an evening, and if any had a different version
from the others, they would all recite theirs and vote, and
the man who had varied would have to abide by their ver-
dict. In this way stories have been handed down with
such accuracy that the long tale of Dierdre was, in the
earlier decades of the eighteenth century, told almost
word for word as in the very ancient MS. in the Royal
Dublin Society. In one case only it varied, and then the
MS. was obviously wrong—a passage had been forgotten
by the copyist. But this accuracy is rather in the folk and
bardic tales than in the fairy legends, for these vary widely,
being usually adapted to some neighboring village or local
fairy-seeing celebrity.
While the Irish fairy tales and folk tales are among the
oldest in the world, they are also the most numerous and
diversified. Although the same personages figure in them
over and over again, many collectors have classified their
chief figures more or less. The following will give an idea
of the main grouping:
There are “ the Sociable Fairies,” who go about in troops,
and quarrel and make love much as men and women do.
They are land fairies or Sheoques (Ir. Sidheog, “a little
fairy”), and water fairies or Merrows (Ir. Moruadh, “a
sea maid”).
The Sheoques haunt the sacred thorn bushes and the
green raths or royalties—those little fields circled by
ditches, and supposed to have been ancient fortifications
and sheepfolds. Many a mortal they have said to have en-
ticed into their dim world. Many have listened to their
fairy music, till human cares and joys drifted from them
and they became great seers, or “fairy doctors,” or musi-
cians, or poets, like Carolan, who is said to have gathered
his tunes while sleeping on a fairy rath! or else they died
in a year and a day, to live ever after among the fairies.
These Sheoques occasionally steal a child and leave a with-
ered fairy, a thousand or maybe two thousand years old,
instead.
IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. xix
The Merrows sometimes come out of the sea in the shape
of little hornless cows. In their own shape, they have
fishes’ tails and wear a red cap, called in Irish cohuleen
driuth. The men among them have green teeth, green hair,
pigs’ eyes, and red noses; but their women are beautiful
and sometimes prefer handsome fishermen to their green-
haired lovers.
Among “ Solitary Fairies” is the Lepricaun (Ir. Leith
bhrogan, i. e. the one shoemaker). He is seen sitting under
a hedge mending a shoe, and whoso catches him can make
him deliver up his crocks of gold, for he is a miser of great
wealth; but if you take your eyes off him he vanishes like
smoke. He wears a red coat with seven buttons in each row,
and a cocked hat, on the point of which he sometimes spins
like a top. In Donegal he goes clad in a great frieze coat.
The Cluricaun’s (Ir. Clobhair-cean) occupations are rob-
bing wine cellars and riding sheep and shepherds’ dogs
the livelong night, until the morning finds them panting
and mud-covered.
The Gonconer or Ganconagh (Ir. Gean-canogh, i.e. love-
talker) is a creature of the Lepricaun type, but a great
idler. He appears in lonely valleys, pipe in mouth, and
spends his time in making love to shepherdesses and milk-
maids.
The Far Darrig (Ir. Fear dearg, i. e. red man) is the
practical joker of the other world. He presides over evil
dreams.
The Pooka (Ir. Pica, a word derived by some from poc,
a hegoat) also is of the family of the nightmare. His
shape is usually that of a horse, bull, goat, eagle, or ass.
His delight is to get a rider, with whom he rushes through
ditches and rivers and over mountains, and whom he
shakes off in the gray of the morning. Especially does he
love to plague a drunkard; a drunkard’s sleep is his king-
dom. At times he takes more unexpected forms than those
of beast or bird. When it rains in Ireland at the same time
that the sun is shining it is a sure sign that the Pooka will
be out that night.
The Dullahan has no head, or carries it under his arm.
He is often seen driving a black coach, called “ coach-a-
bower ” (Ir. Coite-bodhar), drawn by headless horses. It
rumbles to your door, and if you open it a basin of blood is
xx IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.
thrown in your face. It is an omen of death to the houses
where it pauses.
The Leanhaun Shee (Ir. Leanhaun sidhe, i.e. fairy mis-
tress) seeks the love of men. If they refuse, she is their
slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can escape only
by finding one to take their place. Her lovers waste away,
for she lives on their life.
The Far Gorta (man of hunger) is an emaciated fairy
that goes through the land in famine time, begging and
bringing good luck to the giver.
The Banshee (Ir. Bean-sidhe, i.e. fairy woman) is a so-
ciable fairy grown solitary through much sorrow. The
name corresponds to the less common Far Shee (Ir. Fear
sidhe), aman fairy. She wails, as most people know, over
the death of a member of some old Irish family.
There are also the “ House Spirits ”: the Water Sherie,a
kind of will-o’-the-wisp; the Sowlth, a formless luminous
creature; the Pastha (piastbestia), the lake dragon, a
guardian of hidden treasure; and the Bo men fairies, who
destroy the unwary; and there is the great tribe of ghosts,
called Thivishes in some parts.
Representative stories of each of these groups will be
found in the writings of those who have made it their busi-
ness to collect and retell the fairy tales and folk lore of the
country, and we have, under the heading of “ Fairy and
Folk Tales of Ireland, anonymous,” brought together a few
of the typical stories to which no names are attached.
And there is fairy poetry as well, of which not a little
is to be found in the works of the Irish poets from William
Allingham to William Butler Yeats. But it is not so
abundant as one might expect. The ancient myths and
legends and the half-mythical history of Ireland and her
manifold wrongs and sufferings seem to have appealed
more to the Irish poetical spirit.
The very first collections of fairy tales and folk tales
are of course to be found in the old Chap-books. “They
are,” says Mr. W. B. Yeats, “to be found brown with turf
smoke on cottage shelves, and are, or were, sold on every
hand by the peddlers, but cannot be found in any library of
this city of the Sassanach (London). ‘The Royal Fairy
Tales,’ ‘The Hibernian Tales, and ‘The Legends of the
Fairies’ are the fairy literature of the people.”
IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. xxi
Of a certain volume of the ‘ Hibernian Tales,’ Thack-
eray writes pleasantly in his ‘Irish Sketch Book,’ remark-
ing: “ So great is the superiority of the old stories over the
new, in fancy, dramatic interest, and humor, that one can’t
help fancying that Hibernia must have been a very superior
country to Ireland.”
“These Hibernian novels, too,” he continues, “are evi-
dently intended for the hedge-school universities. They
have the old tricks and some of the old plots that one has
read in many popular legends of almost all countries,
European and Eastern ; successful cunning is the great vir-
tue applauded; and the heroes pass through a thousand
wild extravagant dangers, such as could only have been
invented when art was young and faith was large. And
as the honest old author of the tales says they are suited
to the meanest as well as to the highest capacity, tending
both to improve the fancy and enrich the mind, let us con-
clude the night’s entertainment by reading one or two of
them, and reposing after the doleful tragedy which has
been represented. The ‘Black Thief’ is worthy of the
Arabian Nights, I think—as wild and odd as an Eastern
tale. . . . Not a little does it add to these tales that one
feels as one reads them that the writer must have believed
in his heart what he told; you see the tremor, as it were, and
the wild look of the eyes as he sits in his corner and recites
and peers wistfully around lest the spirits he talks of be
really at hand.” And after telling us the Chap-book ver-
sion of the story of ‘ Hudden, Dudden, and Donald,’ and of
“the Spaeman,” he says: “ And so we shut up the hedge-
school library, and close the Galway Nights’ Entertain-
ments; they are not as amusing as Almack, to be sure, but
many a lady who has her opera box in London has listened
to a piper in Ireland.”
It is significant of how Ireland’s contribution to English
literature in every department has been ignored by the Eng- .
lish, and in consequence by the entire literary world, that in
the two great collections of Chap-books made by the elder
and the younger Boswell, which are now in the library of
Harvard University, there are scarcely any of Irish ori-
gin, though England and Scotland are fully represented ;
and yet during the period covered by these collections, as
these remarks by Thackeray and W. B. Yeats would indi-
xxii IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.
cate, her output of this literature was as large as, if not
larger than, that of either England or Scotland. If it had
not been for a certain purchase made by Thackeray at
Ennis when on his tour through Ireland, and for a certain
rainy day in Galway about 1840, the English people would
probably never have known that the Irish people had their
Chap-books from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century
as well as the people of almost all other European coun-
tries.
The systematic collection of Celtic folk tales in English
began in Ireland as early as 1825, with T. Crofton Croker’s
‘Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.’
Among the novelists and tale-writers of the schools of Miss
Edgeworth and Lever folk tales were occasionally utilized,
as by Carleton in his ‘Traits and Stories,’ by Lover in
his ‘Legends and Stories,’ and by Griffin in his ‘ Tales
of a Jury Room.’ These all tell their tales in the manner
of the stage Irishman. Patrick Kennedy, a Dublin book-
seller, printed about one hundred folk and hero tales and
drolls in his ‘ Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts,’ 1866;
‘ Fireside Stories of Ireland,’ 1870; and ‘ Bardic Stories of
Treland,’ 1871. Lady Wilde has told many folk tales very
effectively in her ‘Ancient Legends of Ireland,’ 1887.
Mr. J. Curtin’s ‘Myths and Folk Tales of Ireland,’ 1890,
must not be forgotten. Douglas Hyde has published in
‘ Beside the Fireside,’ 1891, English versions of some of
the stories he had published in the original Irish in his
“Leahbar Sgeulaighteachta,’ Dublin, 1889. Miss Mac
Lintock has published many tales in various periodicals
during the past twenty years; a period which has been re-
markably fruitful in active workers in this hitherto com-
paratively untilled field. P. W. Joyce’s ‘Old Celtic Ro-
mances,’ W. Larminie’s ‘West Irish Folk Tales,’ P. J.
McCall’s ‘ Fenian Nights’ Entertainments, Seumus Mac-
Manus’ ‘Donegal Fairy Tales,’ D. Deeney’s ‘ Peasant
Lote from Gaelic Ireland,’ and many other books too nu-
merous to mention are rich in material of this kind. But
Dr. Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, and W. B. Yeats have
done more than all to reveal to us “the old weird world
which sleeps in Irish lore.’ They know the people of Ire-
land thoroughly, and in their works they give us not only
the folk and fairy tales of the people, but they make us feel
IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. xxiii
how entirely they enter into and pervade and influence
their every-day lives.
One reason, perhaps, why the Irish people are as a rule
go supremely gifted with the power of poetical self expres-
sion, why they are endowed with so rich and luxurious a
fancy, is because for centuries they have been nourished on
such a wealth of fairy tales and wonder stories as is ex-
ceeded by no other literature of the world.
Emerson says, “ What nature at one time provides for
use, she afterward turns to ornament,” and Herbert Spen-
cer, following out this idea, remarks that “ the fairy lore,
which in times past was matter of grave belief and held
sway over people’s conduct, has since been transformed
into ornament for ‘The Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ‘ The
Tempest?‘ The Faérie Queene,’ and endless small tales and
poems; and still affords subjects for children’s story books,
amuses boys and girls, and becomes matter for jocose allu-
sion.”
Sir Walter Scott also says, in a note to ‘The Lady of
the Lake’: “ The mythology of one period would appear to
pass into the romance of the next, and that into the nur-
sery tales of subsequent ages”; and Max Miller, in his
‘Chips from a German Workshop,’ says: “The gods of
ancient mythology were changed into the demigods and
heroes of ancient epic poetry, and these demigods and
heroes again become at a later age the principal characters
of our nursery tales.”
In just the same way many of the Irish folk tales are
the detritus of the ancient bardic stories, and we can see
this detrition in actual process in Ireland to-day, where the
belief in the fairies and legends still exists in the minds
of many of the older folks. As Lady Wilde says in her in-
troduction to ‘ Irish Legends’: “ With the highly sensitive
organization of their race, it is not wonderful that the
people live habitually under the shadow and dread of in-
visible powers which, whether working for good or evil,
are awful and mysterious to the uncultured mind that sees
only the strange results produced by certain forces, but
knows nothing of the approximate causes.” And so Tir-
nan-og, the country of the young, the place where you will
get happiness for a penny, so cheap and common will it be,
is still devoutly believed in by many to whom Hy Braesil,
xxiv IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.
the Island of the Blest, is also something more than a
name.
. And it is not a little curious to note in this connection
that, while the fairy tales of other lands have long been the
natural literature of childhood, it is only in later years that
even in Ireland itself her fairy tales, folk lore, wonder tales,
and hero stories have figured in books especially made for
young people.
The fairy tales and folk lore of Ireland should have
a special interest not alone for Irish-Americans, but for
that greater American nation which is being evolved out of
the mixture of the blood of all the races of the world, to-
day. We inherit, we are infused by, and we are trans-
muting into terms of national individuality, all the ro-
mance, all the culture, all the art, and all the literature
of the past, of all the nations of the world.
And when this individuality shall have been achieved,
we shall have a culture which will be distinctly American,
we shall have an art which will be distinctly American, we
shall have a literature which will be distinctly American
There has entered, and there will enter, into the com.
position of this new and individual race, a greater infu
sion of the Celtic element than of any other, and it is there
fore of the highest importance that the literature in which
this element has been cradled, the literature to which the
Celtic spirit responds most quickly and with the happiest
results, should form part of the mental nourishment of our
young people, in the form of the fairy tales and folk lore of
Ireland.
We have given our children freely for the last two hun
dred years of the English Mother Goose rhymes and fairy
tales, of the German, and even of the Norse fairy tales and
romances—much of the content and idea of which is re-
mote, and to which because of race-inherited feelings and
tendencies, they cannot respond—while we have left un-
heeded the vast treasures which exist in Irish fairy litera-
ture, a literature which makes the strongest appeal to the
largest ingredient in the composition of the new American
race which is being evolved.
Caw: Ó
CONTENTS OF VOLUME III.
MODERN IRISH POETRY.—W. B. Yeats . . é Vii
IntsH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.—Charles Welsh . xvii
Daunt, WILLIAM JOSEPH O'NEILL. - 811
Repealers in Prison and Out, fr. “Righty: -five
Years of Irish History’ . . . 811
King Bagenal, fr. ‘ Eighty-five Years of. Irish
History’ - . 817
A Facetious Irish Peer, fr. : Eighty “five Years of
Irish History’ . 7 . . 819
Davis, THOMAS OSBORNE. . . . . . 822
Fontenoy . - . . . . . . 823
Oh! the marriage . . . . . . 826
A Nation Once Again . . . . . 827
My Grave . . - . . . . . 827
The West’s Asleep . . . . . . 828
The Girl of Dunbwy . 7 . . . . 829
The Welcome . . . . . . s. 830
My Land . . . . . - . . 881
Davitt, MICHAEL . . 832
How the Anglo-Irish Problem Could | be Solved,
fr. ‘ Leaves from a Prison Diary”. . 832
Despair and Hope in Prison, fr. ‘ Leaves. from
a Prison Diary’ . . . . . . 837
Dawson, ARTHUR . . . . . . 841
Bumpers, Squire Tones . . . . . 841
DEENY, DANIEL . . 845
A Midnight Funeral, fr. “ Peasant Lore from.
Gaelic Ireland” . . . 845
A Little Woman in Red, fr. "Peasant Lore
from Gaelic Ireland’ . . . . . 846
xxv
xxvi OONTENTS.
Strange Indeed! fr. ‘ Peasant Lore from Gaelic
Ireland” . . .
DENHAM, Siz JOHN . .
View of London from Cooper's Hi. .
DE VERE, Siz AUBREY . .
Lady Jane Grey, fr. ‘Mary Tudor’
Liberty of the Press . .
The Shannon . . .
DE VERE, AUBREY THOMAS .
How to Govern Ireland,
and Irish Misdeeds’
The Sun God . .
'The Little Black Rose
Dirge of Rory O'More
Bong . . . .
Sorrow.
The Wedding of the Clans
Flowers I would bring .
Bong . . . .
The Long Dring . .
DOHENY, MICHAEL. .
A Cushla Gal Mo Chree .
DOowWDEN, EDWARD .
The Interpretation ot Literature, fr.
cripts and Studies’
England in Shakespeare’s Youth
The Humor of Shakespeare,
A Critical Study’ .
Shakespeare’s Portraiture
‘Transcripts and Studies’
‘Aboard the Sea-‘Swallow .
Oasis . . .
Leonardo’s Monna Lisa .
DOowWLING, BARTHOLOMEW . .
The Brigade at Fontenoy .
fr. ‘
of
‘Trans-
‘Women,
fr. ‘English Misrule
Shakespeare:
CONTENTS.
DowLING, RICHARD.
A Quide to Ignorance, fr. ‘ “Ignorant Essays ,
On Dublin Castle . . . . .
Downey, EDMUND .
From Portlaw to Paradise
King John and the Mayor
Raleigh in Munster . .
Downineé, ELLEN Mary PATRICE . . .
My Owen . . . . . .
Talk by the Blackwater . . . .
DOYLE, JAMES WARREN -
+ 918
The True Friends of the Poor and the Aitietea,
fr. ‘ Letters on the State of Ireland’
DRENNAN, WILLAM «ww wee
Erin . . . . .
The Wake of william ‘Orr . . . .
DRENNAN, WILLIAM, JR... . .
The Battle of Beal-An-. Atha. Buidh . .
DguMMOND, WILLIAM HAMILTON .
Ode Written on Leaving Ireland, fr. the Irish
of Gerald Nugent . . - . .
DUFFERIN, LADY . -
Lament of the Irish Emigrant . .
Terence’s Farewell . . .
Katey’s Letter . .
DurFFERIN, LORD . . . . . -
On Irishmen as Rulers .
An Icelandic Dinner, fr. ‘ Letters From High
Latitudes’. . . . . .
DUFFET, THOMAS . . . .
Come all you pale lovers . . .
Dourry, Siz CHARLE8 GAVAN 7
- 919
. 924
+ 924
s 928
+ 928
- 987
. 942
. 948
. 948
A Dispute with Carlyle, fr. "< Conversations
with Carlyle’ . . . . .
s 951
xxviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Muster of the North . . . . . 954
The Irish Rapparees . . . . « 957
The Irish Chiefs - . - . . 959
. Innishowen . . . . . . 961
DUNBAVEN, EARL OF . . . 968
A City in the Great West, fr. ‘ The Great pi.
vide’. . . . . . . . 968
ECCLES, CHARLOTTE O'CONNOR. . . . . 967
King William . . . . . . . 967
EDGEWORTH, MARIA . . . . . - . 993
Castle Rackrent . . 995
Continuation of the Memoirs of the Rackrent
Family . . . . 1014
The Originality of Irish ‘Bulls Examined, fr.
“Irish Bulls” . . + 1055
Little Dominick, fr. Irish Bulls? . . 1060
Waste Not, Want Not . . . . . 1068
EDGEWORTH, RICHARD LOVELL . . . . . 1073
My Boyhood Days, fr. Memoirs . . . 1073
EGAN, Maurice Francis . - 1080
The Orange Lilies, fr. ‘ The Land of st. Law-
rence’ . . . . . . . 1080
The Shamrock . oe » 6. 1086”
EGLINGTON, JOHN. See Magee, William K.
EMMET, ROBERT . . . - - . . 1086
Last Speech . . - 1087
Lines on the Burying: -Ground of Arbor Hill . 1094
ESLER, MRS. . » « . 1096
The Criminality of Letty Moore . . . 1096
ETTINGSALL, THOMAS . . . , 1114
Darby Doyle’s Voyage to Quebec . . . 1114
Fay, Francis A. . woe ee 1194
How to Become a Poet . . . . . 1124
The Donovans. . . . . . . 1132
Irish Mollgoo. . «© «© ee 1188
CONTENTS.
The Ould Plaid Shawl . . . .
Little Mary Cassidy . . . . .
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES OF IRELAND, ANONYMOUS”).
Will-o’-the-Wisp, fr. ‘ Hibernian Tales’ . .
Loughleagh (Lake of Healing) :
Donald and His Neighbors, fr. ‘ Hibernian
Tales’ . . . .
Queen’s County Witeb, A
The Fairy Greyhound . . .
'The Countess Kathleen O'Shea . -
Rent-Day
Conversion of King Laoghaire’ 8 Daughters
FAROUHAR, GEORGE
The Counterfeit Footman, fr. “The Beaux’
Stratagem’ . . . - . . .
FATHER Prout. See Mahony, Francis Sylvester.
FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL.
Speech on Robert Burns, fr. ‘ The ‘Treland of
His Day’ . . .
The Forging of the ‘Anchor .
Lament Over the Ruins of the Abbey of Timo-
league . . .
Owen Bawn . . . . .
Cashel of Munster . . . . . .
Molly Asthore . . E . . .
Cean Dubh Deelish . E . -
The Lapful of Nuts . . . .
Pastheen Fion . . . . . .
Fair Hills of Ireland .
Looking Seaward, fr. “ Congal >
Grace Nugent, fr. the Irish of O'Carolan
Mild MabelKelly . .
The Coolun, fr. the Irish of Maurice Dugan
FrtzGeraLD, PERCY HETHERINGTON
Sheridan as an Orator, fr. ‘ Lives of the Sheri-
dans’ . . . . . . .
xxx CONTENTS.
FIT£PATRICE, WILLIAM JOHN .
Anecdotes of Keogh, the Irish Massillon, fr.
“Irish Wits and Worthies” . . .
FIT2SIMON, ELLEN O'CONNELL .
Song of the Irish Emigrant, oi or the Woods of
Caillino . . . . . - .
FLECKNOE, RICHARD . . . . . . .
Of Drinking . . . . . . .
Pace
. 1199
1199
. 1206
1206
1208
1209
On Travel . . . . . . . 1209
FLO0p, HENRY . . . . 1210
Flood’s Reply to Grattan’s Invective . . 1212
A Defense of the Volunteers . . . . 1217
On a Commercial Treaty with France . . 1219
FORRESTER, Mrs. ELLEN . . . . . 1220
'The Widow's Message to her Son . . . 1222
Fox, GEORGE . . 1224
The County of “Mayo, fr. ‘the Irish of Thomas
Flavell . . . . . . . 1224
Francis, M. E. See Mrs. Blundell.
Francis, Sik PHILIP . . . . . 1226
To the Duke of Grafton, fr. ‘The Letters of
Junius’ . . . . . . . 1228
FRENCH, WILLIAM PERCY . . . . . . 1233
The First Lord Liftinant © 6 + 1283
FURLONG, ALICE . . . . . . . 1239
'The Trees . . . . . . + 1239
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME IIL
rage
MAYNOOTH COLLEGE . Frontispiece
Founded in 1795 for the education of the Trish priest-
hood. The present buildings were built after designs by
Welby Pugin. They accommodate 800 studente, and the
course of training requires eight years.
ANCIENT IRISH COSTUMES . . . . XVI
Costumes of the Ollamhs and Bards. From Me; k and
Smith's “ Costumes of the Inhabitants of the British Isles.”
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS . . ee ie ie é 833
From an engraving by J. C. McRae.
MICHAELDAVITT . . + 883
From a photograph by William Lawrence, Dublin.
ACUSHLA GAL MO CHREE. (Bright Vein of my heart!) . . 864
From a photograph of an Irish girl wearing the national
‘dloak end hood.” -
“Yet still I love thee more and more,
Croidhe.”
‘A cuisle geal mo Crol
—Michael Doheny.
MONNA LISA. . . . 87
Also called “ La Gioconda. ” From the famous ‘by
Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre, Paris. painting
THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY . . . 880
After the famous painting by Horace Vernet in the Ver-
sailles Museum.
Fontenoy is a little village in Belgium, famous for the battle
fought there, April 80, 1745, between the English, Dutch, Han-
overians, and the French. With the aid of the Irish Brigade
the allies were completely routed. The English broke before the
Trish be ii and Geo IL, on hearing of the disaster, said
* Cursed be he laws that deprive meof such soldiers,” The Irish
lost on nearer of their officers and one-third of their men.
Marder Poe poets and authors have celebrated the battle in song
and story.
THE RIVER BLACKWATER, COUNTY WATERFORD . . 916
From a photograph.
One of the most beautiful rivers in Ireland, if not in the world,
Its charm and delig ighte have been told in song and story more
haps any oth er piece of natural scenery, and a thousand
associations cluster about its name.
“Dear are the green banks we wander ui
Dear is our own river glancing along _
Dearer the trust that as tranquil will be
‘The tides of the future for you and for me.”
Bo sang Ellen M. P. Dowling.
xxx
XXX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
race
LADY DUFFERIN . +. 982
From the engraving by H. Robinson after the drawing by
F. Stone.
THE TREATY STONE, LIMERICK . oe . . . 957
From a photograph.
The Treaty of Limerick which followed the Siege of Derry,
the Battle of the Boyne, the defense of Limerick, and the battles
of Athlone and Aughrim, was signed in 1691 and this picture
shows the stone on which it was signed. The infamous ignoring
of this treaty by the conquerors was a violation of plighted honor
which has done more than any one event to keep alive Irish
hatred and distrust of England. See ‘A Glance at Ireland’s
History’ in VoL IX. of IRISH LITERATURE.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. . . . . + 993
From the original painting by AL Chappel.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, LL.D. . - + 1080
Professor of English Literature at the Catholic ‘University
of Washington ; Associate Eprror oF [IRISH LITERATURE.
from a photograph by Bachrach & Bro., Washington,
ROBERTEMMET. . ui dui . 1 we. 1098
From an old engraving.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON... oo. 1168
After a photograph by Chancellor, Dublin,
THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND. . .. 1188
From a photograph of a scene in County Wicklow. i Showing
part of Lough Dan.
“There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand
‘And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters tanned,
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs [the yellow sand
On the Fair Hills of Holy Ireland.
WILLIAM JOSEPH O’NEILL DAUNT.
(1807—1894.)
‘Wim JOSEPH O'NEILL DAUNT, the able historical writer, was
born at Fullamore, King’s County, April 28, 1807, and died June
29, 1894. He was for some years associated with Daniel 'O'Con-
nell in a secretarial capacity, and throughout his long life he was
steadfast in his admiration for that great leader and in his intense
hostility to English rule in Ireland.
His first published work was ‘Ireland and Her Agitetors,’ 1845,
which was followed by ‘ Hugh Talbot, a Tale of the Irish Confisca-
tions,” 1846. In 1848 he issued his valuable ' Personal Recollections
of O'Connell,’ and in 1851 his ‘Catechism of Irish History,’ which
was a text-book in Irish schools, and a novel entitled ‘ The Gentle-
man in Debt.’ During the later part of his life he lived quietly as
& country gentleman, but that he had not lost any of his early
views is proved by his ‘ Essays on Ireland,’ 1886, and his ‘ Eighty-
Five Years of Irish History,’ published in the same year.
After his death his daughter published in 1896, under the title of
‘A Life Spent for Ireland,’ his personal diary, a most entertaining
Volume, full of good stories and valuable side-lights on the history
is times.
REPEALERS IN PRISON AND OUT.
From ‘ Eighty-five Years of Irish History.’
O’Connell, on the evening of his incarceration, had ex-
claimed: “Thank God, I am in jail for Ireland!” He
believed that Peel’s false move tended to augment the
strength of the national cause. All the prisoners dined
together, and the party wore anything but a tragical air.
They all enjoyed the exhilaration of spirits arising from
a hope that, whatever inconveniences they might sustain,
their imprisonment would accelerate the triumph of the
cause that was nearest to their hearts.
They were for the first few days occupied with the
bustle of fixing themselves in their new quarters. At last
they settled down into something like their usual habits.
Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of The Nation; Doctor
(afterwards Sir John) Gray, the editor of The Freeman;
and Richard Barrett, the editor of The Pilot, found abun-
dant employment superintending their several journals.
The moments unoccupied by business they devoted to study,
811
812 IRISH LITERATURE.
or to taking exercise in the adjoining garden. Mr. Duffy,
under the impression that the imprisonment would last a
year, announced his purpose of reading through Carte’s
‘Life of Ormond,’ in three folio volumes. Mr. Ray still
exercised his supervision of the affairs of the Associa-
tion. John O’Connell wrote his amusing and instructive
‘Repeal Dictionary,’ which appeared in the weekly press,
and which I believe was subsequently published in a col-
lected form. Steele read Kane’s ‘Industrial Resources
of Ireland,” and defaced the fair pages of the work
with innumerable marks of admiration. Barrett was
ready for fun,—frisk, joyous frolic of any sort, and more
than once kept the incarcerated coterie in roars of laugh-
ter by attitudinizing and grimacing in a style that would
have done honor to Liston. Two of the visitors played
the short-armed orator; the comic force of the pathetic
passages being much enhanced by a cambric handker-
chief, which the gentleman who performed the action held
to the weeping eyes of the gentleman who performed the
eloquence. Nearly all the prisoners contributed to the
pages of a jeu d’esprit called Prison Gazette, in which
they quizzed each other and their friends with merry mal-
ice. In short, there never were prisoners who bore go
lightly and joyously the hours of imprisonment, or whose
deprivation of freedom was more soothed by the kind and
sympathetic offices of friends.
They had access to two gardens. In one of these was a
mound with a summer-house on the top. The mound
they amused themselves by calling Tara Hill; the summer-
house was termed Conciliation Hall. In the other garden
they erected a large marquee, which they styled Mullagh-
mast, and in this marquee were received the numerous
deputations who bore addresses to the “convicts” from
the different quarters of the kingdom. I learned from a
gentleman, who was present on one of these occasions,
that O’Connell replied to the bearers of an address in the
following words: “Tell your friends that my heart is joy-
ful, my spirits are buoyant, my health is excellent, my
hopes are high. My imprisonment is not irksome to me,
for I feel and know that it will, under Providence, be the
means of making our country a nation again. I am glad
I am in prison. There wanted but this to my career, I
WILLIAM JOSEPH O'NEILL DAUNT. 813
have labored for Ireland—refused office, honor and
emolument for Ireland—I have prayed and hoped and
watched for Ireland—there was yet one thing wanted—
that I should be in jail for Ireland. This has now been
added to the rest, thanks to our enemies; and I cordially
rejoice at it.”
O’Connell, in the course of that day, was waited on by
a party of American tourists. When they arrived, he
was standing on the top of “Tara Hill.” They doffed
their hats and remained at the foot of the mound until
desired to walk up. “You are probably more visited
here,” said one of them, “than if you were at large.”
“Yes,” replied the Liberator, “and here I cannot use the
excuse of ‘ not at home.’ ”
The progress of Repeal during his imprisonment en-
chanted him. “The people,” said he, “are behaving
nobly. I was at first a little afraid, despite all my teach-
ing, that at such a trying crisis they would have done
either too much or too little—either have been stung into
an outbreak, or else awed into apathy. Neither has hap-
pened. Blessed be God! the people are acting nobly.
‘What it is to have such a people to lead!”
He rejoiced especially over the excellent training of the
Repeal Association; praised the young talent called forth
by the movement, bestowing particular eulogy on Mac-
Nevin and Barry.
“In the days of the Catholic Association,” said he, “I
used to have more trouble than I can express in keeping
down mutiny. I always arrived in town about the 25th
of October, and on my arrival I invariably found some
jealousies, some squabbles—some fellow trying to be
leader, which gave me infinite-annoyance. But now all
goes right—no man is jealous of any other man; each
does his best for the general cause.”
Speaking of his pacific policy, he remarked that it was
a curious coincidence that the Conal of Ossian should
say, “My sword hangs at my side—the blade longs to
shine in my hand—but I love the peace of green Erin of
the streams.”
The convicted patriots received numerous presents of
fresh fruits and flowers. A patriotic confectioner pre-
sented them with two monster cakes. Mr. Scriber of
814 IRISH LITERATURE.
Westmoreland Street sent them seven musical-boxes to
cheer their imprisonment; and it is said that, imme-
diately on the arrival of the harmonious cargo, the pris-
oners evinced their satisfaction with more musical zeal
than taste—by setting the seven hoxes playing together.
Mr. Steele one day placed a stone which he dignified
with the name of Liach Fail, or the Stone of Destiny, on
the side of the mimic Tara Hill in the garden, calling on
Duffy to doff his hat in honor of the august ceremony. .
With these and similar helps and devices did the pris-
oners try to cheat the hours of that bondage which, under
every circumstance of mitigation, must ever be oppressive
to men of ardent minds and active habits. One day John
O’Connell made some remark on the high, gloomy prison
buildings, which excluded the view of the country from the
dining-room. “I am better pleased,” said his father,
“that the view is excluded. To see the hills, and fields,
and sea-coast, and to feel that you were debarred from the
freedom of walking among them, were a worse affliction
than to be deprived altogether of the sight. It would
tantalize too much.” .
On the evening of the ‘eth of September, O’Connell and
his fellow-prisoners were liberated. About ten days pre-
viously his intimate friend, Mr. Patrick Fitzpatrick, of
Eccles Street, had expressed to him the expectation that
the law-lords would confirm the sentence, but that the
prisoners would be liberated by the exercise of the Royal
prerogative. “You must, in that event,” said Mr. Fitz-
patrick, “be prepared with instant securities. How large
is the amount of bail required?”
O’Connell had forgotten the amount, and descended to
the Governor’s office to inspect the book. Mr. Fitzpat-
rick speedily followed, and found O’Connell laughing
heartily at the personal description annexed to his name
in the book: “Daniel O’Connell—complexion good.”
The amount of bail was £5,000 ($25,000) personally, and
two securities at £2,500 ($12,500) each. “ But it is idle,
quite idle to talk of it,” said O’Connell; “ there is not the
least probability—not the smallest shadow of a chance of
our being set free. No, my good friend, we shall suffer
our full term.”
In this conviction O’Connell continued until the even-
WILLIAM JOSEPH O'NEILL DAUNT. 815
ing of the 6th. Two messengers from the Corn Exchange
rushed simultaneously into the prison with the news,
vociferating in such noisy rivalship that their tidings
were for a long time unintelligible. At length one of
them, perforce of better wind, shouted his comrade out of
breath, and having reached the corridor leading to O’Con-
nell’s apartments, he continued to bellow, “I’m first!
Where ’s the Liberator? I’m first!”
“What is it all about?” demanded Mr. Barrett, who
was calmly perambulating the corridor.
“Only that you re free,” cried Edmond O’Hagarty
(the messenger). “I’m first! I’m first! Hurrah!
Where’s the Liberator? I’m first!”
They rushed into a drawing-room where O’Connell was
seated between two ladies, O’Hagarty in his noisy delight
still shouting, “I’m first! I’m first! You’re free, Lib-
erator! Thanks be to God for that same! The judg-
ment ’s reversed.”
“Bah! not true; it can’t be true,” replied O’Connell
coolly.
“ But it is true, Liberator.” And the messenger showed
him the placard which had been printed in London an-
nouncing the fact. He examined it attentively, and said
to Fitzpatrick: “ After all, this may be true,” when doubt
was dispelled by the sudden appearance of the attorneys
for the defense. “On the merits,” were the first words of
Mr. Ford, who threw his arms round O’Connell’s neck and
kissed him. O’Connell wore his green velvet Mullagh-
mast cap, and Ford wore a broad-brimmed beaver hat,
oblivious in his ecstasy of the presence of the ladies. “On
the merits,” he triumphantly repeated; “no technical-
ities at all—nothing but the merits.”
The news had now spread through the prison, and the
other prisoners crowded to the drawing-room to learn
their fate. There was a quiet sort of triumph, no bois-
terous joy amongst the traversers. In the course of the
evening O’Connell said to my informant in a tone of deep
solemnity: “ Fitzpatrick, the hand of man is not in this.
It is the response given by Providence to the prayers of
the faithful, steadfast, pious people of Ireland.”
It was near twilight when O’Connell left the prison to
return to his home in Merrion Square. As he walked
816 IRISH LITERATURE.
along the streets, the people at first gazed on him in be-
wildered astonishment. They could scarcely believe the
evidence of their eyes. Was O’Connell indeed free? They
crowded round him to ascertain the fact; the crowds aug-
mented; and by the time he arrived at the western end of
Merrion Square, his friends were obliged to form a cordon
around him to avert the inconvenient pressure of the de-
lighted multitude. When he placed his foot on his own
hall-door step, to re-enter the home from which he had
for three months been iniquitously- exiled, the popular
ecstasy became uncontrollable. Cheer after cheer rose
and swelled upon the air. The people gave vent to their
wild delight in vociferous acclamations; every heart beat
high with pride and triumph at the liberation of their
venerated leader—not by ministerial grace or favor, but
by the strict and stern vindication of that law which had
been so nefariously outraged in the trial and conviction.
O’Connell appeared on the balcony and addressed the
people briefly. He exhorted them to bear their victory
with moderation. Let them, he said, demonstrate their
fitness to rule themselves by the spirit of conciliation and
friendliness with which they should enjoy their triumph.
On the next day (Saturday, the 7th of September) the
liberated patriots passed in procession through the lead-
ing streets of the metropolis. It was a scene of inde-
scribable excitement. When opposite the door of the old
Parliament House in College Green, the cavalcade halted
—O’Connell rose in his triumphal car, uncovered his
head and pointed with significant emphasis to the edifice.
Then arose a mighty shout from the surrounding thou-
sands—again and again did O’Connell, looking proudly
around him, repeat his significant gesture; again and again
did the myriads who thronged the broad street upraise
their glad voices in deafening cheers. It was like the roar
of the ocean, that proud shout of a nation’s triumph and a
nation’s hope.
WILLIAM JOSEPH O’NEILL DAUNT, 7
KING BAGENAL.
From ‘ Eighty-five Years of Irish History.’
“Of manners elegant, fascinating, polished by extensive
intercourse with the great world, of princely income, and
of boundless hospitality, Mr. Bagenal possessed all the
qualities and attributes calculated to procure him popu-
larity with every class. A terrestrial paradise was Dun-
leckny for all lovers of good wine, good horses, good dogs,
and good society. His stud was magnificent, and he had
a large number of capital hunters at the service of visitors
who were not provided with steeds of their own. He de-
rived great delight from encouraging the young men who
frequented his house to hunt, drink, and solve points of
honor at twelve paces.
“Enthroned at Dunleckny, he gathered around him a
host of spirits congenial to his own. He had a tender af-
fection for pistols, a brace of which implements, loaded,
were often placed before him on the dinner table. After
dinner the claret was produced in an unbroached cask;
Bagenal’s practice was to broach the cask with a bullet
from one of his pistols, whilst he kept the other pistol in
terrorem for any of the convives who should fail in doing
ample justice to the wine.
“Nothing could be more impressive than the bland,
‘ fatherly, affectionate air with which the old gentleman
used to impart to his junior guests the results of his own
experience, and the moral lessons which should regulate
their conduct through life.
“¢Tn truth, my young friends, it behooves a youth enter-
ing the world to make a character for himself. Respect
will only be accorded to character. A young man must
show his proofs. I am not a quarrelsome person—I never
was—I hate your mere duelist; but experience of the
world tells me there are knotty points of which the only
solution is the saw handle. Rest upon your pistols, my
boys! Occasions will arise in which the use of them is
absolutely indispensable to character. A man, I repeat,
must show his proofs—in this world courage will never be
taken upon trust. I protest to Heaven, my dear young
friends, I am advising you exactly as I should advise my
own | son.’
818 IRISH LITERATURE.
“ And having thus discharged his conscience, he would
look blandly around with the most patriarchal air imag-
inable.
“His practice accorded with his precept. Some pigs,
the property of a gentleman who had recently settled near
Dunleckny, strayed into an enclosure of King Bagenal’s,
and rooted up a flower knot. The incensed monarch or-
dered that the porcine trespassers should be shorn of their
ears and tails; and he transmitted the several appendages
to the owner of the swine with an intimation that he, too,
deserved to have his ears docked ; and that only he had not
got a tail, he (King Bagenal) would sever the caudal
member from his dorsal extremity. ‘ Now,’ quoth Bagenal,
‘if he’s a gentleman, he must burn powder after such a
message as that.’
“Nor was he disappointed. A challenge was given by
the owner of the pigs. Bagenal accepted it with alacrity,
- only stipulating that as he was old and feeble, being then
in his seventy-ninth year, he should fight sitting in his
arm-chair; and that as his infirmities prevented early
rising, the meeting should take place in the afternoon.
‘Time was,’ said the old man, with a sigh, ‘that I would
have risen before daylight to fight at sunrise, but we can-
not do these things at seventy-eight. Well, Heaven’s will
be done.’ :
“They fought at twelve paces. Bagenal wounded his
antagonist severely; the arm of the chair in which he sat
was shattered, but he remained unhurt; and he ended the
day with a glorious carouse, tapping the claret, we may
presume, as usual, by firing a pistol at the cask.
“The traditions of Dunleckny allege that when Bagenal,
in the course of his tour through Europe, visited the petty
court of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the Grand Duke, charmed
with his magnificence and the reputation of his wealth,
made him an offer of the hand of the fair Charlotte, who,
being politely rejected by King Bagenal, was afterwards
accepted by King George III.”
Such was the lord of Dunleckny, and such was many an
Irish squire of the day. Recklessness characterized the
time. And yet there was a polished courtesy, a high-bred
grace in the manners of men who imagined that to shoot,
or to be shot at, on “ the sod,” was an indispensable ingre-
WILLIAM JOSEPH O’NEILL DAUNT. 819
dient in the character of a gentleman. Look at Bagenal,
nearly fourscore, seated at the head of his table. You ob-
serve the refined urbanity of his manner, and the dignified
air which is enhanced, not impaired, by the weight of
years. You draw near to participate in the instructions of
this ancient moralist. What a shock—half ludicrous, half
horrible—to find that he inculcates the necessity of prac-
tice with the hair-triggers as the grand primary virtue
which forms the gentleman!
A FACETIOUS IRISH PEER.
From ‘ Eighty-five Years of Irish History.’
Amongst those whom a descent of some half-dozen gen-
erations entitled to call themselves Irish, the greater num-
ber had so habitually looked on politics as a game to be
played for the purpose of personal aggrandizement, that
they had no conception of anything like political principle.
There was a thorough moral recklessness about them which
rendered them quite ready for any act of political despera-
tion, provided it did not tend to enlarge the power of the
people. Their personal habits necessarily fostered their
recklessness. Their profusion and extravagance were
great; and some of them—not a few—resorted to modes of
raising the wind which showed that they mingled few
scruples with their system of financial pneumatics. There
was, withal, a strong dash of odd drollery in the brazen
shamelessness of their expedients.
A curious specimen of this order of men was Lord
M—~y. His title was the result of some dexterous traffic
in Parliamentary votes. His manners were eminently fas-
cinating, and his habits social. He had a favorite saying
that a gentleman could never live upon his rents; a man
who depended on his rents had money only upon two days
in the year, the 25th of March and the 29th of September.
He accordingly left no expedient untried to furnish him-
self with money every other day too.
It chanced that when Lord Kerry’s house in St. Ste
phen’s Green was for sale, a lady named Keating was de-
820 IRISH LITERATURE.
sirous to purchase a pew in St. Anne’s Church appertain-
ing to that mansion. Mrs. Keating erroneously took it
into her head that the pew belonged to Lord M——y; she
accordingly visited his lordship to propose herself as a
purchaser.
“My dear madam,” said he, “I have not got any pew,
that I know of, in St. Anne’s Church.”
“ Oh, my lord, I assure you that you have; and if you
have got no objection, I am desirous to purchase it.”
Lord M——y started no farther difficulty. A large sum
was accordingly fixed on, and in order to make her bar-
gain as secure as possible, Mrs. Keating got the agreement
of sale drawn out in the most stringent form by an at-
torney. She paid the money to Lord M——-y, and on the
following Sunday she marched up to the pew to take pos-
session, rustling in the stateliness of brocades and silks.
The beadle refused to let her into the pew.
“Sir,” said the lady, “ this pew is mine.”
“ Yours, madam?”
“Yes; I have bought it from Lord M——y.”
“Madam, this is the Kerry pew; I do assure you Lord
M—-xy never had a pew in this church.”
Mrs. Keating saw at once she had been cheated, and on
the following day she went to his lordship to try if she
could get back her money.
“My lord, I have come to you to say that the pew in
St. Anne’s—”
“ My dear madam, I Il sell you twenty more pews if you
have any fancy for them.”
“Oh, my lord, you are facetious. I have come to ac-
quaint you it was all a mistake; you never had a pew in
that church.”
“ Hah! so I think I told you at first.”
“ And I trust, my lord,” pursued Mrs. Keating, “ you
will refund me the money I paid you for it.”
“The money? Really, my dear madam, I am sorry to
say that it is quite impossible—the money’s gone long
ago.”
“ But—my lord—your lordship’s character—”
“ That s gone too!” said Lord M——y, laughing with
good-humored nonchalance.
I have already said that this nobleman's financial opera-
WILLIAM JOSEPH O’NEILL DAUNT. 821
tions were systematically extended to every opportunity
of gain that could possibly be grasped at. He was colonel
of a militia regiment; and, contrary to all precedent, he
regularly sold the commissions and pocketed the money.
The Lord Lieutenant resolved to call him to an account
for his malpractices, and for that purpose invited him to
dine at the Castle, where all the other colonels of militia
regiments then in Dublin had also been invited to meet
him. After dinner the Viceroy stated that he had heard
with great pain an accusation—indeed, he could hardly
believe it—but it had been positively said that the colonel
of a militia regiment actually sold the commissions.
The company looked aghast at this atrocity, and the in-
nocent colonels forthwith began to exculpate themselves,
“T have never done so.” “I have never sold any.” “Nor
I.” The disclaimers were general. Lord M——y resolved
to put a bold face on the matter.
“T always sell the commissions in my regiment,” said
he, with the air of a man who announced a practice rather
meritorious. All present seemed astonished at this frank
avowal.
“ How can you defend such a practice?” asked the Lord
Lieutenant.
“ Very easily, my lord. Has not your Excellency always
told us to assimilate our regiments as much as possible to
the troops of the Line?”
“Yes, undoubtedly.” .
“Well, they sell the commissions in the Line, and I
thought that the best point at which to begin the assimila-
tion.”
It is told of this nobleman, that when he was dying he
was attended by a clergyman, who remonstrated with him
on the scandalous exploits of his past life, and strongly
urged him to repent. “Repent?” echoed the dying sinner;
“I don’t see what I have got to repent of; I don’t remem-
ber that I ever denied myself anything.”
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS.
(1814—1846,)
Taomas O8SBORNE Davis, born in 1814, was a native of Mallow, an
historicand picturesque town, pleasantly situated on thenorth bank of
the Munster Blackwater, in the county ofCork. Through his mother
he could trace some kinship with the 0’Sullivans, chiefs of Berehaven.
There was much in the scenery of his native place to awaken the
Poatiic and patriotic feelings of the boy. The stern old walls of
low Castle had witnessed several sieges in the days when the
Lords President of Munster held their court within its ramparts.
Not far stands Kilcolman, where Edmund Spenser penned ‘The
Faérie Queene,’ and near it is Newmarket, where John Philpot Cur-
ran was born and reared.
Davis from an early exhibited a keen interest in the language,
the history, and the antiquities of his country. He was educated
at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was graduated in 1836 ; and
two years afterward he was called to the bar. Later on he joined
the Repeal Association of O'Connell, a step which colored his whole
after life and had influences far wider than his personal fortunes.
The Repeal Association, powerful as it was in some respects, was in
others very feeble. There attached to it, in the first place, the sus-
picion of being a sectarian body, a society which identified national
with purely Catholic interests. The autocratic position of O'Connell,
too, had had the effect of making the Association appear to be merely
an arena in which he performed as astar. The adhesion of Davis
to the body did much to remove these prejudices, and the result was
that the new recruit was followed by several others of perhaps a
better class than had hitherto joined O’Connell’s Association.
In 1842 The Nation newspaper was founded : an event destined
to bear most important fruits, literary and political, in the history
of Ireland. Mr. (later on Sir) Charles Gayan Duffy was the editor,
and Davis became one of the chief contributors. It was in the col-
umns of this paper that the greater part of Davis’ poems appeared,
and his stirring words were among the most potent agencies in
stimulating the revolutionary passions of the people. ‘I re-
member,” wrote the Very Reverend Father O’Burke, ‘‘ with what
startled enthusiasm I would arise from reading Davis’ ‘Poems’ ;
and it would seem to me that before my young eyes I saw the dash
of the Brigade at Fontenoy ; it would seem to me as if my youn,
ears were filled with the shout that resounded at the Yellow Fo1
and Benurb—the war-cry of the Red Hand—as the English hosta
were swept away, and, like snow under the beams of the rising
sun, melted before the Irish onset.”
Davis soon formed oO party in the Association, which aimed at
objects and contemplated means to which the founder of the body
‘was most vehemently op] . In the middle of the struggle be-
tween the advocates of physical force—who came to be known as
the Young Ireland party—and O’Connell, who believed in the om-
nipotence of constitutional agitation, Davis died, Sept. 16, 1845.
varies Google
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS
From an engraving by J. €. McRae
varies Google
varies Google
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 823
It is impossible to describe the poignancy of regret with which
the news of this premature and Budden close to a career of guch
bright promise was received. Extreme as were the political opin-
ions of Davis, they were free from the least suspicion of sectarian-
ism ; and this, together with the {ransparent purity of his motives
and his splendid talents, made him ired by men of the most
opposite principles. ‘‘ Perhaps the best evidence of the potency
and the nobility of his influence,” says a writer in ‘A Treasury of
Irish Poetry,’ ‘‘ was the fact that this sense of loss was overcome by
the recollection of the ideals he had held up, and that his memory
was honored by the undaunted pursuance of his work, and the
maintenance of the pure and lofty ardor with which he wrought.”
The great heart of O'Connell was deeply stirred when he heard
of his young opponent's death. From Derrynane his habit was to
send a long weekly letter, to be read at the meeting of the Associ-
ation. This week his letter was very short—nothing but a burst of
lamentation. ‘‘ As I stand alone in the solitude of my mountains
many a tear shall I shed in memory of the noble youth. Oh! how
vain are words or tears when such a national calamity afflicts the
country. Put me down among the foremost contributors to what-
ever monument or tribute to his memory be voted by the National
Association. Never did they perform a more imperative, or, alas !
so sad a duty. I can write no more—my tears blind me.”
“It was in his poetry,” says a writer in ‘A Treasury of Irish
Poetry,’ ‘that he most intimately revealed himself. And though
Thomas Davis was extraordinarily fertile in ideas and indefatigable
in methodic industry, the best thing he gave to the Irish peo) le
was not an idea or an achievement of any sort, but simply the
gift of himself. He was the ideal Irishman. North and south,
east and west, the finest qualities of the population that inhabit
the island seemed to be combined in him, developed to their high-
est power, and colored deeply with whatever it is in character and
temperament that makes the Irish one of the most separate of
races, The nation saw itself transfigured in him, and saw the
dreams nourished by its long memories and ancestral pride coming
true. Hence the intense nal devotion felt toward Davis b:
the ardent and thoughtful young men who were associated wit
him, and the sense of irreparable loss caused by his early death.
He stood for Ireland—for all Ireland—as no other man did, and it
was hardly possible to distinguish the cause from his personality.”
FONTENOY.
Thrice at the huts of Fontenoy the English column failed,
And twice the lines of Saint Antoine the Dutch in vain as-
sailed;
For town and slope were filled with fort and flanking battery,
2 The battle of Fontonoy, fought in Flanders in 1745 between the French
and the Allies—English, Dutch, and Austrians—in which the Allies were
worsted. The Irish Brigade fought by the side of the French, and won
great renown by their splendid conduct in the field.
824 IRISH LITERATURE.
And well they swept the English ranks and Dutch aux-
iliary.
As vainly, through De Barri’s wood, the British soldiers burst,
The French artillery drove them back, diminished and dis-
persed.
The bloody Duke of Cumberland beheld with anxious eye,
And ordered up his last reserve, his latest chance to try.
On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, how fast his generals ride!
And mustering come his chosen troops, like clouds at even-
tide.
Six thousand English veterans in stately column tread,
Their cannon blaze in front and flank, Lord Hay is at their
head;
Bteady they step a-down the slope—steady they climb the
hill;
;
Steady they load—steady they fire, moving right onward still,
Betwixt the wood and Fontenoy, as through a furnace blast,
Through rampart, trench, and palisade, and bullets shower-
ing fast;
And on the open plain above they rose, and kept their course,
With ready fire and grim resolve, that mocked at hostile force:
Past Fontenoy, past Fontenoy, while thinner grow their
ranks—
They break, as broke the Zuyder Zee through Holland’s ocean
inks.
More idly than the summer flies, French tirailleurs rush
round;
As stubble to the lava tide, French squadrons strew the ground;
Bomb-shell, and grape, and round-shot tore, still on they
marched and fired—
Fast, from each volley, grenadier and voltigeur retired.
“Push on my household cavalry!” King Louis madly cried:
To death they rush, but rude their shock—not unavenged they
died.
On through the camp the column trod—King Louis turns his
rein:
“Not yet, amy liege,” Saxe interposed, “the Irish troops re-
main;
And Fontenoy, famed Fontenoy, had been a Waterloo,
Were not these exiles ready then, fresh, vehement, and true.
“Lord Clare,” he said, “you have your wish, there are your
Saxon foes!”
The marshal almost smiles to see, so furiously he goes!
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 825
How fierce the look these exiles wear, who’re wont to be so
gay.
The treasured wrongs of fifty years are in their hearts to-
day—
The treaty broken, ere the ink wherewith ’t was writ could
ary,
Their plundered homes, their ruined shrines, their women’s
parting cry,
Their priesthood hunted down like wolves, their country over-
thrown,—
Each looks as if revenge for all were staked on him alone.
On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, nor ever yet elsewhere,
Rushed on to fight a nobler band than these proud exiles were.
O’Brien’s voice is hoarse with joy, as, halting, he commands,
“Fix bay’nets ”—“ charge,”—Like mountain storm, rush on
these fiery bands!
Thin is the English column now, and faint their volleys grow,
Yet, must’ring all the strength they have, they make a gallant
show.
They dress their ranks upon the hill to face that battle-
wind—
Their bayonets the breakers’ foam; like rocks, the men be-
hind!
One volley crashes from their line, when, through the surging
smoke,
With empty guns clutched in their hands, the headlong Irish
broke.
On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, hark to that fierce huzza!
“ Revenge! remember Limerick! dash down the Sacsanach!”
Like lions leaping at a fold, when mad with hunger’s pang,
Right up against the English line the Irish exiles sprang:
Bright was their steel, “tig bloody now, their guns are filled
with gore;
Through shattered ranks, and severed files, and trampled flags
they tore;
The English strove with desperate strength, paused, rallied,
staggered, fled—
The green hillside is matted close with dying and with dead.
Across the plain and far away passed on that hideous wrack,
While cavalier and fantassin dash in upon their track.
On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun,
With bloody plumes the Irish stand—the field is fought and
won!
IRISH LITERATURE.
OH! THE MARRIAGE,
Oh! the marriage, the marriage,
With love and mo bhuachaill! for me,
The ladies that ride in a carriage
Might envy my marriage to me;
For Eoghan is straight as a tower,
And tender and loving and true,
He told me more love in an hour
Than the squires of the county could do.
Then, Oh! the marriage, &c.
His hair is a shower of soft gold,
His eye is as clear as the day,
His conscience and vote were unsold
When others were carried away;
His word is as good as an oath,
And freely ’t was given to me;
Oh! sure ’t will be happy for both
The day of our marriage to see.
Then, Oh! the marriage, &c.
His kinsmen are honest and kind,
The neighbors think much of his skill,
And Eoghan’s the lad to my mind,
Though he owns neither castle nor mill.
But he has a tilloch of land,
A horse, and a stocking of coin,
A foot for the dance, and a hand
In the cause of his country to join.
Then, Oh! the marriage, &c.
‘We meet in the market and fair—
We meet in the morning and night—
He sits on the half of my chair,
And my people are wild with delight.
Yet I long through the winter to skim,
Though Eoghan longs more I can see,
When I will be married to him,
And he will be married to me.
Then, Oh! the marriage, the marriage,
With love and mo bhuachaill for me,
The ladies that ride in a carriage
Might envy my marriage to me.
1 Mo bhuachaill, ma bouchal, my boy.
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 827
A NATION ONCE AGAIN.
When boyhood’s fire was in my blood,
I read of ancient freemen,
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
Three Hundred men and Three men.
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain,
And Ireland, long a province, be
A Nation once again.
And, from that time, through wildest woe,
That hope has shone, a far light;
Nor could love’s brightest summer glow
Outshine that solemn starlight:
It seemed to watch above my head
. In forum, field, and fane;
Its angel voice sang round my bed,
“A Nation once again.”
It whispered, too, that “ freedom’s ark
And service high and holy,
Would be profaned by feelings dark,
And passions vain or lowly:
For freedom comes from God’s right hand,
And needs a godly train;
” And righteous men must make our land
A Nation once again.”
Bo, as I grew from boy to man,
Í bent me to that bidding—
My spirit of each selfish plan
And cruel passion ridding;
For, thus I hoped some day to aid—
Oh! can such hope be vain?
When my dear country shall be made
A Nation once again.
MY GRAVE.
Shall they bury me in the deep,
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep?
Shall they dig a grave for me,
Under the greenwood tree?
1 The Three Hundred Greeks who died at Thermopylm, and the Three
Romans who kept the Sublician Bridge.—Davis.
IRISH LITERATURE.
Or on the wild heath,
Where the wilder breath
Of the storm doth blow?
Oh, no! oh, no!
Shall they bury me in the palace tombs,
Or under the shade of cathedral domes?
Sweet ’t were to lie on Italy’s shore;
Yet not there—nor in Greece, though I love it more.
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find?
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind?
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle mound,
Where coffinless thousands lie under the ground?
Just as they fall they are buried so—
Oh, no! oh, no!
No! on an Irish green hillside,
On an opening lawn—but not too wide;
For I love the drip of the wetted trees—
I love not the gales, but a gentle breeze,
To freshen the turf ;—put no tombstone there,
But green sods decked with daisies fair;
Nor sods too deep, but so that the dew
The matted grass-roots may trickle through.
Be my epitaph writ on my country’s mind:
“ He served his country, and loved his kind.”
Oh! ’t were merry unto the grave to go,
If one were sure to be buried so.
THE WEST’S ASLEEP.
When all beside a vigil keep,
The West’s asleep, the West’s asleep.
Alas! and well may Erin weep,
When Connaught lies in slumber deep.
There lake and plain smile fair and free,
?Mid rocks—their guardian chivalry.
Sing! oh! let me learn liberty
From crashing wind and lashing sea.
That chainless wave and lovely land
Freedom and Nationhood demand;
Be sure the great God never planned
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 829
For slumbering slaves a home so grand.
And long a brave and haughty race
Honored and sentineled the place—
Sing, oh! not even their sons’ disgrace
Can quite destroy their glory’s trace.
For often, in O’Connor’s van,
To triumph dashed each Connaught clan,
And fleet as deer the Normans ran
Through Curlieu’s Pass and Ardrahan,
And later times saw deeds as brave;
And glory guards Clanricarde’s grave—
Bing, oh! they died their land to save,
At Aughrim’s slopes and Shannon’s wave.
And if, when all a vigil keep,
The West ’s asleep, the West ’s asleep—
Alas! and well may Erin weep,
That Connaught lies in slumber deep.
But hark! some voice like thunder spake:
“The West ’s awake! the West ’s awake!”
Sing, oh! hurrah! let England quake;
We’ll watch till death for Erin’s sake.
THE GIRL OF DUNBWY.
?T is pretty to see the girl of Dunbwy
Stepping the mountain statelily—
Though ragged her gown and naked her feet,
No lady in Ireland to match her is meet.
Poor is her diet, and hardly she lies—
Yet a monarch might kneel for a glance of her eyes;
The child of a peasant—yet England’s proud Queen
Has less rank in her heart and less grace in her mien.
Her brow ’neath her raven hair gleams, just as if
A breaker spread white ‘neath a shadowy cliff—
And love and devotion and energy speak
From her beauty-proud eye and her passion-pale cheek.
But, pale as her cheek is, there ’s fruit on her lip,
And her tec‘* flash as white as the crescent moon’s tip,
And her form and her step, like the red-deer’s, go past—
As lightsome, as lovely, as haughty, as fast.
IRISH LITERATURE.
I saw her but once, and I looked in her eye,
And she knew that I worshiped in passing her by.
The saint of the wayside—she granted my prayer,
Though we spoke not a word; for her mother was there.
I never can think upon Bantry’s bright hills,
But her image starts up, and my longing eye fills;
And I whisper her softly: “ Again, love, we ’ll meet!
And III lie in your bosom, and live at your feet.”
THE WELCOME.
Come in the evening, or come in the morning,
Come when you’re looked for, or come without warning,
Kisses and welcome you ’ll find here before you,
And the oftener you come here the more I’! adore you.
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted,
Red is my cheek that they told me was blighted,
The green of the trees looks far greener than ever,
And the linnets are singing, “ True lovers, don’t sever!”
I’ll pull you sweet flowers, to wear, if you choose them:
Or, after you ’ve kissed them, they ’ll lie on my bosom.
I'll fetch from the mountain its breeze to inspire you;
TI fetch from my fancy a tale that won't tire you.
O your step’s like the rain to the summer-vexed farmer,
Or saber and shield to a knight without armor;
I'll sing you sweet songs till the stars rise above me,
Then, wandering, I 11 wish you, in silence, to love me.
Well look through the trees at the cliff and the eyrie;
Well tread round the rath on the track of the fairy;
We’ll look on the stars, and we’ll list to the river,
Till you’ll ask of your darling what gift you can give her.
O she’ll whisper you, “ Love as unchangeably beaming,
And trust, when in secret, most tunefully streaming,
Till the starlight of heaven above us shall quiver
As our souls flow in one down eternity’s river.”
So come in the evening, or come in the morning,
Come when you ’re looked for, or come without warning,
Kisses and welcome you’ll find here before you,
And the oftener you come here the more I’! adore you.
THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 831
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted,
Bed is my cheek that they told me was blighted,
The green of the trees looks far greener than ever,
And the linnets are singing, “ True lovers, don’t sever!”
MY LAND.
She is a rich and rare land;
O she ’s a fresh and fair land;
She is a dear and rare land—
This native land of mine.
No men than hers are braver—
Her women’s hearts ne’er waver;
I’d freely die to save her,
And think my lot divine.
She’s not a dull or cold land;
No! she’s a warm and bold land;
O she’s a true and old land—
This native land of mine.
Could beauty ever guard her,
And virtue still reward her,
No foe would cross her border—
No friend within it pine!
© she’s a fresh and fair land,
O she’s a true and rare land!
Yes, she ’s a rare and fair land“
This native land of mine.
MICHAEL DAVITT.
(1846 —)
MICHAEL Davrrr was born in Ireland, March 25, 1846. He was the
gon of the late Martin Davitt of Straide, County Mayo, and Scran-
ton, Pa.; his mother was Mary, the daughter of John Yore, St.
Joseph, Mich. He with his parents was evicted in 1852 ; he began
work in a Lancashire cotton mill in 1856, losing his right arm by
machinery in 1857. He was employed as a newsboy, printer's
“devil,” and assistant letter-carrier successively. He joined the
Fenian Brotherhood in 1865. He was arrested and tried in London
for treason-felony in 1870, and sentenced to fifteen years al
servitude. He was released on ‘‘ ticket-of-leave” in 1877; and with
the late Mr. Parnell and others founded the Irish Land League in
1879. He was arrested on the charge of making a seditious speech
the same year, but prosecution was abandoned.
He came to the United States to organize an auxiliary Land
League organization in 1880. He was arrested shortly after his
return in 1881, and sent back to penal servitude. He was released
May 6, 1882 ; arrested in 1888, and tried under the law of King
Edward III. for seditious speech and imprisoned for three months.
He was included in the ‘‘ Parnellism and Crime” all ions, and
spoke for five days in defense of the Land League before The
imes Parnell Commission. He was first elected to Parliament for
the county of Meath, while a prisoner in Portland Convict Prison,
in 1882, but was disqualified by special vote of the House of Com-
mons on account of non-expiry of sentence for treason-felony. He
unsuccessfully contested Waterford City in 1891. He was Mem-
ber of Parliament for North Meath in 1892, and was unseated on
petition. He was returned unopposed for Northeast Cork in the
game year, and resigned in 1893, owing to bankruptcy proceedings
arising out of the North Meath election petition. He was returned
unopposed for East Kerry and South Mayo in 1895, while in Aus-
tralia, and resigned in 1899.
He traveled in the United States, Canada, Australia, Egypt, Pales-
tine, France, Italy, Switzerland, and in South Africa.
His publications are ‘Leaves from a Prison Diary,’ 1884; ‘De-
fense of the Land League,’ 1891 ; ‘Life and Progress in Australia,’
1898 ; ‘The Boer Fight for Freedom,’ 1902 ; ‘The Fall of Feudalism
in Ireland,’ 1904.
HOW THE ANGLO-IRISH PROBLEM COULD BE
SOLVED.
From ‘ Leaves from a Prison Diary.’
The question is frequently asked, “ What will satisfy
the Irish people?” And the answer is as frequently volun-
varies Google
MICHAEL DAVITT
From a photograph by William Lawrence, Dublin
MICHAEL DAVITT. 833
teered, “ Nothing. Nothing will satisfy them but total
separation—and that they won’t get.” It is an illogical
way of answering such a question, but pardonable in an
Englishman; and the impatience which it manifests is also
strikingly characteristic. Your ordinary Englishman en-
tertains the pretty conceit that English rule is of such a
beneficent character that any people who do not tamely
submit to it are to be pitied and—dragooned. While in
particular, the Irish people, for their obstinacy in refusing
to see any virtue in English rule in Ireland, “ must be
clearly made to understand,” and “ must be told once for
all,” that England will maintain her hold upon Ireland at
all costs. á
All this talk is indulged in really for the gake of con-
cealing the chagrin which England experiences in conse-
quence of the fact, revealed in recent years, that the people
of Ireland have discovered how to make it more difficult
for England to rule Ireland, than to govern all the rest of
her vast empire put together. English statesmen, even
now, are devising a middle course between things as they
are, and total separation. They are casting about for a
scheme which will combine the characteristics of modern
statesmanship—a scheme, for example, which will involve
as small a concession as possible to the demand of the
people concerned, and have a fair chance of passing the
House of Lords. Eminent statesmen have more than once
challenged Irish public men to say what they want, but
the required answer has not been forthcoming. There
have been answers, but they have been too reasonable.
English statesmen have not been able to offer upon them
the comment, “We told you so, the thing demanded is
utterly out of the range of practical politics, and, in point
of fact, is absolutely out of the question.” The answer
really required is such a one as English statesmen can
meet with a non possumus. And for this reason, English
statesmen, I repeat, know that a substantial concession
will have to be made to the genius of Irish nationality
within the next few years. The demand for it is too
strong to be resisted; for the Irish race have to be dealt
with now.
If at home on Irish soil the people can “ make the ruling
powers uneasy” to such an extent as I have indicated, in
58
834 IRISH LITERATURE.
Westminster their representatives can clog the wheels of
legislation and endanger the very existence of government
by parliamentary methods; while abroad, in Great Brit-
ain, America, Australia, Canada, the exiled Irish have
discovered how to operate on the flank, so to speak, by
elevating the Irish question into the position of a national
or colonial issue. Further, England’s guilt towards Ire-
land is known and commented on all over the world. Fur-
ther still, the real people of England—the working men of
England—have of late been asking for the reasons why
Ireland should be perpetually discontented, and the an-
swers they have received, to the credit of their common
sense, be it said, do not appear to have satisfied them. Re-
spectable England is very angry; and, to conceal their
annoyance at the inevitable, and to pave the way for a
concession, English statesmen ask the question of Irish
public men—“ What do you want?” and require an
answer to which they may return an emphatic “ impossi-
ble.” But this is only diplomacy. They only desire us to
say how much we want, in order to say in reply how little
they will give. They ask us to “formulate our demand,”
that they, in formulating their concession, may assure
their opponents of its comparative innocence. Responsi-
ble Irish public men have declined to fall into the trap.
And they have acted very wisely. For why should Irish
public men show their hand rather than English Prime
Ministers?
Apart altogether from considerations of this character,
however, there are others of a distinctly Irish nature which
the leaders of the National movement in Ireland have to
take into account. The varying shades of National senti-
ment may not be ignored. Let us therefore analyze the
degrees of intensity of Irish Nationalist aspirations.
We have first, the Extremists, those who believe that to-
tal separation from England is the only thing that would
satisfy Irish genius or develop it properly. These include
the most self-sacrificing Irishmen. They represent, in
their aspirations for Irish liberty, those who have made
the most illustrious names in Ireland’s history. They in-
elude many cultured men, especially among the expatri-
ated portion of the race, but their main strength is in the
working classes. Patriotism is purer among the indus-
MICHAEL DAVITT. 835
trial order because less modified by mercenary motives and
less liable to corrupting influences. But the Extremists
or Separatists are divided among themselves upon the
question of method. There are Separatists who advocate
physical force, believing moral force, that is, constitution-
al means, ineffectual and demoralizing. This section in-
cludes men who have never tried moral force and who
believe solely either in “honorable warfare” or “dyna-
mite.” It also includes those who have tried moral force
and given it up in despair. - Then there are the Separa-
tists who, with the experiences of ’48 and ’67 before their
minds, rely upon constitutional action alone.
Next in importance to the Extremists come the Home
Rulers, or Federalists, who may be divided into those who
disbelieve in the possibility of Separation and those who
do not see its necessity. This section of the National
party includes some of the ablest and most earnest men in
Ireland. Their methods, I need hardly say, are strictly
constitutional.
No Irish leader can afford to ignore either of these two
principal phases of Irish National sentiment. Were such
a man to commit himself to a definite scheme, at the mere
invitation of an English Minister, he would run the risk
of alienating that section of his supporters whose views
were not represented in his proposals. It is an obvious
remark that such a contingency would not be unwelcome
to English statesmen, From what I have just said, it will
be readily perceived how difficult is the task to which
Irish popular leaders are asked to address themselves.
Nevertheless, I shall venture to outline a scheme of local
and National self-government which, I believe, would com-
mand the support of the majority of the Irish people at
home and abroad, and which would probably receive a fair
trial at the hands of the Extremists, though its operation
would undoubtedly be watched with a jealous eye.
In the first place, there should be established in Ireland
a system of county government, by means of Elective
Boards, to take the place of the existing unrepresentative
and practically irresponsible Grand Jury system. The
functions of such Boards should be more comprehensive
than those exercised by the Grand Juries. For example,
in addition to the duty of administering purely county
836 IRISH LITERATURE.
business, these Boards should be permitted to initiate
measures of general application; such as schemes of arte-
rial drainage, tramways, railways, canals, docks, harbors,
and similar enterprises, which would be of more than local
importance and character. Such schemes, after being
fully discussed by these elective bodies, would be submitted
to the National Assembly to be subsequently described.
Then the County Boards should control the police within
the county, and appoint the magistrates, and be entirely
responsible for the preservation of law and order.
Further, should the land problem be justly and satis-
factorily solved on the lines of national proprietary, the
duty of assessing and coliecting the land-tax would nat-
urally devolve upon the County Boards, which, deducting
what was necessary for the expenses of county government,
would remit the balance to the National Exchequer. In
fact the object of such a system should be to constitute
each county, as far as practicable, a self-governing com-
munity.
Manifestly any system of local self-government for Ire-
land involves a corresponding one of National self-gov-
ernment as its natural and inevitable complement. To
extend the principle of local self-government at all in
Ireland, without radically changing the system of Castle
rule, would only have the effect of increasing the fric-
tion already existing between the people and their rulers.
Hence, it is absolutely necessary that legislation for Na-
tional self-government should go hand in hand with any
scheme for the creation of Elective County Boards. I am
well aware that the hope is indulged, in some quarters,
that the inclusion of Ireland in a general measure of
county government, with the sop of an Irish Parliamen-
tary Grand Committee, thrown in, will suffice to choke off
the demand for Irish legislative independence; but English
statesmen need not delude themselves with the idea that
any such Westminster expedient will satisfy the genius of
Irish Nationality.
There could be established in Dublin a National Assem-
bly, composed of elected members from the constituencies
of Ireland, who should proceed to the administration of all
Irish affairs, in the manner which obtains in Colonial par-
liaments, excepting the substitution of one for two Cham-
MICHAEL DAVITT. 837
bers, here proposed. That is to say, the Representatives of
the Crown in Ireland would call upon some member of the
National Assembly to form a government, the different
members of which should be constituted the heads of the
various Boards, which at present are practically irrespon-
sible bureaucracies; but which, under the system here pro-
posed, would become departments of a popular govern-
ment, and open to the supervision of the people through
the National Assembly. Such a government, subject to
the control of the governed through their elected represen-
tatives, would be the practical solution of the Anglo-Irish
difficulty. It would be but the common definition of con-
stitutional rule carried into practice. It would, as already
remarked, be the application to misgoverned and unfor-
tunate Ireland of a constitution kindred to that which
British statesmanship has long since granted, wisely and
well, to a consequently peaceful and contented Canada.
Certainly if a similar act of political justice and sound
policy does not solve the Irish difficulty, nothing less will.
What possible danger could England run from such an
application of constitutional rule to a country much near-
er to the center of Imperial power than Canada? But
what a beneficent change for Ireland—nay, what a relief
to England herself—would be involved in such an act of
simple political justice!
DESPAIR AND HOPE IN PRISON.
From ‘ Leaves from a Prison Diary.’
As it seldom happens that even the worst of criminals is
found to be all crime, neither is an association of one thou-
sand of convicts all repulsive moral deformity. Imprison-
ment, like many other unfortunate occurrences in the life
of those who are born under an unlucky star, has what, for
want of a more accurate expression, I shall term its bright
side also, inasmuch as its life in some very remote respects
approaches to that of the less criminal—because uncon-
victed—outside world.
All the talk of a convict prison is not of murder, theft,
838 IRISH LITERATURE.
and indecency, nor is misery and unhappiness always pres-
ent among those who may be supposed to be the exclusive
victims of “ grim-visaged Despair.” Therefore is there that
I may call a negative silver lining to even the dark cloud of
penal existence. It is a most singular thing that I have
met very few individuals in prison who gave evidence, in
appearance or talk, of being truly miserable, no matter
what the length of their sentence, amount of extra punish-
ment, or contrast between their previous and their convict
life, may have been.
It is true the deepest sorrow and most acute pains of life
are often hid from the mockery of human pity away in the
recesses of the sufferer’s breast; and that therefore the
smiling face and cheerful conversation are not to be relied
upon as sure indications of a contented or happy ex-
istence. Yet a constant and familiar observation of men
of all ages, possessing the strongest of human passions,
while being subject to disciplinary restraints that have
no parallel in the daily annoyance or troubles of outside
life, would be almost certain to detect any tendency to-
wards despair or severe heart-suffering on the part of men
who should succumb to their fate or surroundings. It is
also certain that numbers of prisoners having comforta-
ble homes in the outer world must often indulge in sad
regrets for what has lost them their enjoyment, and allow
their minds to dwell on the painful contrast between the,
perhaps, happy influence and remembrance of the one,
and the cheerless and weary aspect of the other mode of
life.
But these feelings are seldom or never exhibited in the
general behavior or talk of four-fifths of the inmates of a
convict prison; and happy, indeed, is it for all concerned
in their custody that it is so; as such a mass of bridled
passions, if maddened by ever-present thoughts of family,
home, and former pleasures (while mind and body are
made conscious every hour in every day of the terrible
penalties which crime has purchased), would become as
unmanageable and dangerously restless as a thousand
caged hyenas.
It is only when these possible feelings overcome the re-
sisting influence of Hope and Patience—the bright and
ever-present guardian angels of the imprisoned—nowhere
MICHAEL DAVITT. 839
so needed, and thanks to a beneficent Providence, nowhere
go constantly present and powerful, as in a prison—that
the heart fails in presence of seemingly unbearable woe,
inducing mental aberration and finally insanity in the
unfortunate victims. Such cases, are, however, not fre-
quent, while the instances of prisoners buoying up their
existence under the weight of life sentences with the hope
of something being done for them some time, through the
agency of some fortunate circumstance or other, are almost
ag numerous as are such terrible sentences themselves.
The first two years of penal servitude are the hardest
to bear, and test mental endurance more than the whole
of the remainder of an ordinary sentence. Liberty has
only just been parted with. The picture of the outside
world is still imprinted upon the memory, and home and
friends, with perhaps a dearer object still, are made to
haunt the recollection whenever the association of ideas
recalls some incidents of happier days. Of these two years
the heaviest portion is comprised within the nine or ten
months which must be spent in what is termed “ pro-
bation ”’—solitary confinement in Millbank or Penton-
ville; and while “solitary” is not much dreaded by or-
dinary prisoners at a later stage of penal existence, it is
truly a terrible ordeal to undergo at the commencement.
In Millbank this is specially so. The prison is but a few
hundred yards west of Westminster Palace, from whence
comes, every quarter of an hour, the voice of Big Ben,
telling the listening inmates of the penitentiary that
another fifteen minutes of their sentences have gone by!
What horrible punishment has not that clock added to
many an unfortunate wretch’s fate, by counting for him
the minutes during which stone walls and iron bars will
a prison make! Then again there are the thousand-and-
one noises that penetrate the lonely cells and silent cor-
ridors of that cheerless abode. Now it is the strains of
a band from St. James’s Park, “bringing back to the
memory merry days long gone by;” next it is the whistle
of the railway engine, with its suggestiveness of a journey
“home;” and so on, during the long weary days and nights,
until the terrible idea of suicide is forced across the mind
as the only mode of release from the horrible mockery of
the noisy, joyful world beyond the boundary walls....
840 - IRISH LITERATURE.
This all-sustaining prison virtue, Hope, necessarily
a kindred sort of comforting delusion in prisoners,
adapting itself to the seeming requirements of those whose
lot is hardest, and hiding the worst features of the objec-
tive present behind a picture of a pleasant and happy,
if imaginary, future. Prison is the paradise of castle
builders—the fruitful dreamland of fortunes to be made,
happiness to be won, and pleasures to be tasted, that shall
more than compensate for the trials and privations of
the past by the double enjoyment of their intrinsic delights
and the contrast which their possession will make to the
days when prison walls had frowned upon liberty and
prison rations had but little comparison with the food of
the gods. Alnaschar himself never conjured up so glo-
rious a picture of gratification that was to come as will
the imaginative convict while employed at his daily tasks,
or in confiding his plans and prospects of the future to
some one who will lend an attentive ear to their narration.
Apart from such of the airy structures as are erected
upon projected crime, this phase of criminal mental
activity often conducts the stream of convict talk from
its ordinary track on ugly themes into a more pleasant
channel, in which it is easy to learn something of the better
side of those whose blacker deeds and criminal ideas I
have already endeavored to sketch.
ARTHUR DAWSON.
(1700 ?—1775.)
ARTHUR Dawson was born about 1700, and was graduated B.A.
at Dublin University. He was a noted wit and bon vivant of the
days of Grattan’s Parliament. He wrote songs and verses, but
does not appear to have published any collection of them. He was
asbrewd and witty lawyer of the type of Counselor Pleyden in
Scott's ‘Guy Mannering.’ In 1742 he was appointed Baron of the
Irish Court of Exchequer, and he died in 1775.
There is an amusing story told about the origin of ‘Bumpers,
Squire Jones.’ Carolan and Baron Dawson happened to be enjoy-
ing the hospitalities of Squire Jones at Moneyglass, and slept fn
rooms adjacent to each other. The bard, being called upon by the
company to compose a song or tune in honor their host, under-
took to comply with their request ; and on retiring to his ay
ment took his harp with Ea and ‘not only produced the melody
now known as ‘ Bumpers, Sq juire Jones,’ but also very indifferent
English words to it. ile the bard was thus employed the Judge
was not idle, Being possessed of a fine musical ear as well as of
considerable poetical talents, he not only fixed the melody on his
memory, but actually wrote the song now incorporated with it be-
fore he retired to - At breakfast on the following morning,
when Carolan sang and PI layed his composition, Baron Dawson, to
the astonishment of present, and of the bard in particular,
stoutly denied the claim of Carolan to the melody, charged him
with audacious piracy, both musical and poetical, and to prove the
fact, sang the melody to his own words amidst the joyous shouts
of approbation of all his hearers—the enraged bard excepted, who
vented his execrations in curses on the Judge both loud and deep.
The Baron later on, it is said, avowed the source of his inspiration.
Lover in his ‘Poems of Ireland’ sa; ys: ‘In Bunting’s ‘General
Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland ? Clementi, London) it is
stated that the song was only imitated from the original Irish of
Carolan by Baron Dawson, which I think not improbable. The
translation—if translation it be—is evidently a free one, however ;
the allusion to Salkeld and Ventris is clearly a lawyer’s. But,
whether original or imitated, the song is full of spirit and the meter
ingeniously adapted to a capriciously sportive melody.”
BUMPERS, SQUIRE JONES.
Ye good fellows all,
Who love to be told where good claret ’s in store,
Attend to the call
Of one who’s ne’er frighted,
But greatly delighted
With six bottles more
842 IRISH LITERATURE.
Be sure you don't pass
The good house, Moneyglass,
Which the jolly red god so peculiarly owns,
?T will well suit your humor—
For, pray, what would you more,
Than mirth with good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones?
Ye lovers who pine
For lasses that oft prove as cruel as fair,
Who whimper and whine
For lilies and roses,
With eyes, lips, and noses,
Or tip of an ear!
Come hither, I’l] show ye
How Phillis and Chloe
No more shall occasion such sighs and such groans;
For what mortal ’s so stupid
As not to quit Cupid,
When called to good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones?
Ye poets who write,
And brag of your drinking famed Helicon’s brook,—
Though all you get by it
Is a dinner ofttimes,
In reward for your rhymes,
With Humphry the Duke,—
Learn Bacchus to follow,
And quit your Apollo,
Forsake all the Muses, those senseless old crones:
Our jingling of glasses
Your rhyming surpasses
When crowned with good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones.
Ye soldiers so stout,
With plenty of oaths, though no plenty of coin,
Who make such a rout
Of all your commanders,
Who served us in Flanders,
And eke at the Boyne,—
Come leave off your rattling
Of sieging and battling,
And know you’d much better to sleep in whole bones;
Were you sent to Gibraltar,
Your notes you ’d soon alter,
And wish for good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones.
ARTHUR DAWSON. 843
Ye clergy so wise,
Who mysteries profound can demonstrate so clear,
How worthy to rise!
You preach once a week,
But your tithes never seek
Above once in a year!
Come here without failing,
And leave off your railing
?Gainst bishops providing for dull stupid drones;
Says the text so divine,
“What is life without wine?”
Then away with the claret—a bumper, Squire Jones!
Ye lawyers so just,
Be the cause what it will, who so learnedly plead,
How worthy of trust!
You know black from white,
You prefer wrong to right,
As you chance to be fee’d :—
Leave musty reports
And forsake the king ’s courts,
Where dulness and discord have set up their thrones;
Burn Salkeld and Ventris,
And all your damned entries,
And away with the claret,—a bumper, Squire Jones!
Ye physical tribe
Whose knowledge consists in hard words and grimace,
Whene’er you prescribe,
Have at your devotion,
Pills, bolus, or potion,
Be what will the case;
Pray where is the need
To purge, blister and bleed?
When, ailing yourselves, the whole faculty owns
That the forms of old Galen
Are not so prevailing
As mirth with good claret,—and bumpers, Squire Jones!
Ye fox-hunters eke,
That follow the call of the horn and the hound,
Who your ladies forsake
Before they ’re awake,
To beat up the brake
1 Law commentators of the time.
IRISH LITERATURE.
Where the vermin is found:—
Leave Piper and Blueman,
Shrill Duchess and Trueman,—
No music is found in such dissonant tones!
Would you ravish your ears
With the songs of the spheres,
Hark away to the claret,—a bumper, Squire Jones!
DANIEL DEENEY.
Damme. Deenry is one of the more recent collectors of Irish folk
lore. His book ‘Peasant Lore from Gaelic Ireland ’ has already
gone into two editions, and while it has created some discussion it
is generally recognized as a valuable contribution to the stock of
folk t tales which have been recovered from the people of the Con-
nemara and i cpeaiine diairicts press end were also common to the
A MIDNIGHT FUNERAL.
From ‘ Peasant Lore from Gaelic Ireland.’
“ Arrah! wheesht wid ye!” cried an old man with whom
I was discussing such topics, “ wid ye b’lieve this? ”
“ Would I believe what?” I asked.
“It’s as thrue as I’m living,” he rejoined. “I heerd it
from the man’s own lips—God be merciful te him!—an’
the Lord forbid that I should belie him!”
“ What was it?” I inquired.
“Did ye know Bryan Duggan that lives there beyant
in Ballymichael?” answered the old man, like the pro-
verbial Irishman.
I shook my head.
“Oh, no,” he went on, “he died afore ye come here.
Well, he was comin’ home wan night from Galway. ’T wis
afther twelve o’clock or maybe drawin’ up to wan. He
had his horse an’ car wid him, an’ him walkin’ along at
the horse’s head, smokin’ away as content as ye like, an’
it a fine moonlight night—glory be to God!—when what
shud he see afore him in the middle o’ the road but three
men carryin’ a coffin. Sorra long ’t was, sor, till they let
down the coffin. Shure, mo léun,' the hair wis standin’
on Bryan’s head with fear, but puttin’ the sign o’ the cross
on hisself, he walked on till he came up till where the
three men wor standin’ beside the coffin.
“¢The blissin’ o’ God on ye,’ said Bryan in Irish, ‘an’
what ’s wrong with yees at all, at all?’
“The same till yerself,’ spoke up wan o’ the three; ‘ but
come an’ take a fourth man’s place under this, an’ akse
no more questions.’
1 Mo léun, to my sorrow.
845
846 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Well, sor, he wis goin’ till akse, ‘ what ’ll I do with me
horse an’ car?’ but he thought o’ hisself in time, an’ he
didn’t; for ye see he wis towld till akse no more questions,
an’ it widn’t be right for him t’ go agin them. But, sorra
call he had, for it’s well they knew what wis passin’ in
his min’, an’ says another o’ them, says he, ‘yer horse an’
car ’1l be here till ye come back.’
“Well, he went with them an’ helped them t’ carry the
coffin, an’ sorra a heavier corpse—the Lord be good te
us!—he said he iver was undher. They went on till they
left it in the graveyard, an’ then they towld him he might
go back te his horse an’ car. ‘Oh,’ says Bryan, says he,
“II help yees t’ dig the grave whin I did come.’
“Do what yer towld,’ says the third o’ them that didn’t
speak afore, ‘or maybe it wid be worse for ye.’
“Well, sor, Bryan wis loath till say agin them, so he
wint back to his horse an’ car, an’ shure enough they wor
there afore him, on the very spot he left them.”
“Did Bryan know the men?” I inquired when the old
man had finished.
“Did he know them? Feth, thin, he did, for they wor
three first cousins o’ his own that died long afore that.”
“ And who was in the coffin? ”
“Bryan’s own brother that died in Califoornia that
same night, as he heerd afterwards in a letther that come
from his uncle in America.”
The old man assured me that “ Bryan niver towld a lie
in his life, an’s dead now—God be merciful to him!”
“ Amen,” said I fervently.
Dear reader do not scoff! You may never be called
upon to assist the dead to carry the dead at a mysterious
midnight funeral; nevertheless, cast not ridicule upon the
story of Bryan Duggan’s experience.
A LITTLE WOMAN IN RED.
From ‘ Peasant Lore from Gaelic Ireland.’
It was about six o’clock on a harvest morning—not long
ago, but quite recently. The dew was yet upon the oats
and upon the grass. “Mickey Owen” was fixing up the
DANIEL DEENEY. 847
face of the corn ridge with his reaping hook in the little
garden below the road, the shore road between Carraroe
and Galway.
He “never felt,” as he himself assured me, till a little
woman with a red petticoat upon her head and around her
shoulders stood by his side. “God bliss yer work,” said
she to him. “You too,” replied Mickey, with a start.
“Can ye show me the road to Galway?” said the little
woman in red—the outer nether garment she wore, and
which reached down to her shoeless feet, was red also.
“There it is above there,” said Mickey, pointing to the
main road, between which and where they stood there was
only one other smaller garden.
“ But could I not get to the road this way?” inquired
the little woman, waving her hand straight across the
garden in a direction parallel to the road.
“Well, ye could,” replied Mickey, “but not so aisy.
If ye go over through the gardens, ye’ll come on a
boreen that ’ll bring ye till the road. But shure ye have
nothin’ till do but go out on the road here, an’ ye’ll have
only that little wall there between the other garden an’
the road to cross.”
“Il go the way I think best meself,” says she, and in-
stantly disappeared as if she had melted into air.
Mickey was terribly frightened, for then he knew she
was no “ earthly body,” as he said himself.
Dear reader, once more I caution you not to cast ridi-
cule upon such stories. They are not fictions. They are
the real experiences of our Gaelic friends, who hold
occasional commune with stray travelers of the mystic
world.
STRANGE INDEED!
From ‘ Peasant Lore from Gaelic Ireland.’
One of the most remarkable, and best authenticated,
stories I have ever heard was narrated to me quite recently
by one who doubted not the truth of it. The narrator
told it in whispers. It was too solemn to be dealt with
in the ordinary conversational tone, too mysterious to be
848 IRISH LITERATURE.
lightly or flippantly rehearsed. He did not wish to let
it “go any farther. It was better not to say too much
about it.” I cannot, therefore, give the names of the
dramatis persone, if I may without levity so designate
them. Nor is it necessary. The facts lose nothing by the
omission.
Two young men in a western country took a boat, and
rowed to a fair one spring morning not very long ago.
They took “a little drop too much at the fair ” themselves,
and they took a little drop with them in a bottle—for
themselves, too, no doubt. They set sail before a fair
wind on their return late in the evening. They had some-
thing over twelve miles to go.
In their little village at home they had left a friend and
comrade. This young man had gone to the bog for turf
on the fair evening, just about half an hour after his two
friends left the fair.
He filled his creel, got it on his back, and started for
home. Chancing to look round, he saw, seated on a little
heathery mound, the two young men who, as I have stated,
had left the fair twelve miles distant only half an hour
before. They had a bottle, and were apparently enjoy-
ing themselves. They beckoned to him to go to them.
He sat down on the heath to get the creel more easily off
his back, and then—they were nowhere to be seen!
He had seen them plainly, he had not expected them
back so early, and he could not have been deceived.
Believing they were trying to “trick him,” he looked all
round about in the long heather behind the little “ clamps”
of turf, everywhere—but they were not to be seen any-
where! Greatly astonished, and frightened, too, he hast-
ened home and told what he had seen. He and a few of the
neighbors went to the beach to ascertain if the boat had
returned. It was not there. No, indeed! It was found
next morning broken in fragments in a little cave ten
miles further away! Nine days afterwards the bodies of
the two unfortunate young men who had been its occupants
were washed ashore. A strange, strange story, but one
which I have not concocted. “I tell my tales as they were
told to me.”
SIR JOHN DENHAM.
(1615—1669,)
Sm Jonn DENHaAM was born in Dublin in 1615. He was educated
in England, and after taking his degree at Oxford he went to Lon-
don to study law. But cards and dice had more attraction for him
than learning or law, and he was constantly relapsing into the vice
of gambling, until, in 1638, when his father died, he lost all the
money—several thousand pounds—that had been left him.
Sir John Denham should have a special interest for our readers
because he was the first Irish poet of repute who wrote in English.
His tragedy called ‘ The Sophy ’ appeared in 1641. Speaking of the
Poet in connection with this piece, Waller said that ‘‘ he broke out
ike the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody
was aware or in the least suspected it.” After this he retired to
Oxford, where, in 1643, he published ‘Cooper's Hill,’ a poem of
some three hundred lines, on which his fame chiefly rests.
During all this time he continued to take a prominent part in
public irs, acting for the King in several capacities. At the
ijtoration he was appointed to the office of Surveyer-General of
the King's buildings, and at the coronation received the Order of the
ith.
Soon after this, when in the height of his reputation for poetry
and genius, he married for the second time; but the union was go
unhappy that for a time he became a lunatic. Fortunately he was
i soon restored to his full health and vigor of mind. He died
at his office in Whitehall, March 19, 1669, and was buried in
‘Westminster Abbey.
Dr. Johnson says that ‘‘ Denham is justly considered as one of
the fathers of English poetry. . . . He is one of the writers that im-
proved our taste and advanced our language.” Prior places Denham
and Waller side by side as improvers of English versification, which
was perfected by Dryden. Pope in his ‘ Essay on Criticism’ speaks of
“the easy vigor of a line
‘Where Denham’s strength and Waller’s sweetness join ;”
and in his ‘Windsor Forest’ he calls Denham ‘‘lofty” and ‘‘ma-
jestic,” and, talking of ‘ Cooper's Hill,’ he prophesies—
“On Cooper’s Hill eternal wreaths shall grow,
While the mountain, or while Thames shall flow.”
A modern critic, however, Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, says: ‘The
works of Denham are small in extent. The miscellaneous pieces
and ‘ Cooper's Hill’ are all that need attract critical attention. The
reputation of the last-mentioned poem rests almost entirely upon
its famous quatrain describing the river Thames :—
“0 could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
ough deep yet clear, though gentle et not dull,
Strong without rage, bored o’erflowing full.”
IRISH LITERATURE.
VIEW OF LONDON.
From ‘ Cooper's Hill.’
Through untraced ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye,—
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place
Crowned with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether ’t is a part of earth or sky
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain or descending cloud,—
Paul’s, the late theme of such a Muse whose flight
Has bravely reached and soared above thy height;
Now shalt thou stand, though sword or time or fire,
Or zeal more flerce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, while thee the best of poets sings,
Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,
And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise,
Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd,
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud,
And is to him who rightly things esteems
No other in effect but what it seems,
Where, with like haste, though several ways, they run,
Some to undo, and some to be undone;
While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other’s ruin and increase;
As rivers lost in seas some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.
O happiness of sweet retired content!
To be at once secure and innocent!
SIR AUBREY DE VERE.
(1788—1846.)
Sm AUBREY DE VERE was the eldest son of Sir Vere Hunt, who
afterward took the name of De Vere. He was born at Curragh
Chase in County Limerick, Aug. 28, 1788, received his education
at Harrow, where he had for schoolfellows Byron and Sir Robert
Peel, and when very young he married Mary, a sister of Lord Mont-
eagle. He wrote little till he had reached the age of thirty. His
first work was a dramatic poem entitled ‘Julian the Apostate,’
which appeared in 1822. He next published ‘The Duke of Mercia,’
an historical drama in verse ; ‘A Lamentation for Ireland,’ and
other poems ; followed in 1842 by ‘A Song of Faith, Devout Ex-
ercises and Sonnets,’ which he dedicated to Wordsworth. We are
told by his son that the "' sonnet was with him to the last a favorite
form of composition. This taste was fostered by the magnificent
sonnets of Wordsworth, whose genius he had early hailed, and whose
friendship he regarded as one of the chief honors of his later life.”
His last work was ' Mary Tudor,’ published after his death in 1847,
and written during the last year of his life in intervals of severe
illness. Sir Aubrey died as he had lived, peacefully in the arms of
his famil at Curragh Chase, July 28, 1846.
Tudor,’” says Mr. W. MacNeile Dixon in ' A Treasury
of ae Poetry,’ ‘is worthy of comparison with the Histories of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the delineation of Queen
Mary we possess a portrait the most arresting that the modern
drama has to offer—a portrait at once human and royal, at once tragic
and convincing.” Love for his native land breathes through every
line of his ‘ entation for Ireland,’ and his sonnets, such as
‘The Shannon,’ ‘ Lismore,’ ‘The Soldiers of Sarsfield,’ and many
others, are redolent of the same feeling. Wordsworth ‘regarded his
sonnets as among the most perfect of our age.
LADY JANE GREY.
From ‘Mary Tudor.’
‘A few moments before her execution, she takes her last farewell
of her weeping mother.]
This bridal ring—the symbol of past joy?
What shall I give thee?—they have left me little—
What slight memorial through soft tears to gaze on?
I cannot part with it; upon this finger
It must go down into the grave. Perchance
After long years some curious hand may find it,
Bright, like our better hopes, amid the dust,
And piously, with a low ae replace it.
IRISH LITERATURE.
Here, take this veil, and wear it for my sake.
And take this winding-sheet to him, and this
Small handkerchief, so wetted with my tears,
To wipe the death-damp from his brow. This kiss—
And this—my last—print on his lips, and bid him
Think of me to the last, and wait my spirit.
Farewell, my mother! Farewell, dear, dear mother!
These terrible moments I must pass in prayer—
For the dying—for the dead! Farewell! farewell!
LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.
Some laws there are too sacred for the hand
Of man to approach: recorded in the blood
Of patriots, before which, as the Rood
Of faith, devotional we take our stand;
Time-hallowed laws! Magnificently planned
When Freedom was the nurse of public good,
And Power paternal : laws that have withstood
All storms, unshaken bulwarks of the land!
Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind,
Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain,
On such we found our rights, to such we cling;
In them shall power his surest safeguard find.
Tread them not down in passion or disdain;
Make a man a reptile, he will turn and sting.
THE SHANNON.
River of billows, to whose mighty heart
The tide-wave rushes of the Atlantic Sea;
River of quiet depths, by cultured lea,
Romantic wood or city’s crowded mart;
River of old poetic founts, which start
From their lone mountain-cradles, wild and free,
Nursed with the fawns, lulled by the woodlark’s glee,
‘And cushat’s hymeneal song apart;
River of chieftains, whose baronial halls,
Like veteran warders, watch each wave-worn steep,
Portumna’s towers, Bunratty’s royal walls,
Carrick’s stern rock, the Geraldine’s gray keep—
River of dark mementoes! must I close
My lips with Limerick’s wrong, with Aughrim’s woes?
AUBREY T. DE VERE.
(1814—1902,)
AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE, the third son of Sir Aubrey de Vere,
was born in 1814 at the paternal mansion, Curragh Chase, County
Limerick, and he was educated at Trinity College. He composed
both in prose and in verse, and the list of his works is a long one.
In 1842 appeared ‘The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora,’ a lyrical
tale ; in 1843, ‘ The Search after ine, Recollections of Greece,
and other Poems’; in 1856, ‘ Poems, Miscellaneous and Sacred’ ;
in 1857, ‘May Carols’; in 1861, ‘The Sisters, Inisfail, and other
Poems’ ; in 1864, ‘The Infant Bridal, and other Poems’; in 1869,
‘Irish Odes, and other Poems’; in 1872, ‘The Legends of St. Pat-
rick’ ; in 1874, ‘ Alexander the Great,’ a dramatic poem; and in
1879, ‘ Legends of the Saxon Saints.’ Besides the above-mentioned
drama he has written ‘St. Thomas of Canterbury,’ ‘The Foray of
queen, Meeve’ (1882) ; ‘ Legends and Records of the Church and the
pire’ (1887) ; ‘St. Peter's Chains’ (1888) ; ‘ Mediseval Records
and Sonnets.’
His prose works are ‘ English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds’ (1848) ;
‘ Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey’ (1850) ; ‘The Church
Settlement of Ireland, or Hibernia Pacanda’ (1866); ‘Ireland's
Church Property and the Right Use of It’ (1867); ‘Pleas for
Secularization ’ (1867) ; ‘Essays, chiefly on Poetry ' (1887); ‘ Easays,
chiefly Literary and Ethical’ (1889) ; and ‘ Recollections’ (1897).
A volume of correspondence entitled ‘ Proteus and Amadeus,’ in
which the chief religious and philosophical questions in controversy
at the time were reviewed, publi in 1878, was edited by Mr. De
Vere.
His ‘ Inisfail ’ is the one of his volumes of poetry which perhaps
possesses the greatest interest for Irish readers. The idea is very
original ; it is to convey in a series of poems a picture of the chief
eventa in certain great cycles of Irish history. ‘Its aim,” wrote
the poet himself, ‘‘ is to embody the essence of a nation’s history.
Contemporary historic poems,” he went on, ‘‘ touch us with a magi-
cal hand; but they often pass by the most important events, and
linger beside the most trivial.” Accordingly he illustrated each
epoch by some representative poem and event. At one time he cele-
brates a great victory in the joyous swing of the ballad ; at another
an elegy depicts the darkness of a nation’s defeat. A great reli-
gious epoch is celebrated in stately rhyme ; and at another moment
the poet has resort to a lighter measure when individual love plays
an important part in fashioning the history of the future. In this
way the history of Ireland is presented in a series of tableaux.
The volume published under the title of ‘ The Infant Bridal ’ also
contains many exquisite gems from his various works. His prose
style combines the two qualities of simplicity and cultured grace.
Aubrey de Vere, who has been well called ‘‘the wearer of Words-
853
854 IRISH LITERATURE.
worth’s mantle,” died at Curragh Chase, Adare, County Limerick,
to the great loss of poetry, in January, 1902.
“Simplicity,” says Mr. W. MacNeile Dixon in ‘A Treasury of
Irish Poetry,’ ‘‘ with full-heartedness—whether in joy or grief—a
childlike transparency of soul, a courageous spirituality, these Celtic
qualities Mr. De Vere's poetry preserves for us ; and because it pre-
serves them his memory and his work are safe. He will be enrolled
as a worthy successor to the bards of long ago, from Oiseen or
“That Taliessin once who made the rivers dance,
And in his rapture raised the mountains from their trance.”
HOW TO GOVERN IRELAND.
From ‘ English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds.’
I do not affirm, or imply, that England possesses less of
moral truth than other nations which make it less their
boast. I state simply that it does not bear that propor-
tion which it ought to her verbal truth, and therefore that
she has nothing to boast of in this particular. Does a
truthful nation, when called on to act, allow the gates of
new and serviceable knowledge to be blocked up by a litter
of wilful and sottish prejudices? Is it a truthful act to
judge where you have no materials, and to condemn where
you pause not to judge? You often depict with minute
ness and consistency the character of an Irish peasant
or proprietor. As long as a class of men seems to you
stamped with one common image, conclude that you see it
but from a distance, and as a mask. On closer inspec-
tion you would trace the diversities of individuality. You
know no more of the Irish peasant or proprietor than the
former knows of you, and you as little care to know them.
I do not call the Irish the finest peasantry in the world,
although, if their characters were equal to their disposi-
tions, they might, perhaps, justly be so termed; but I have
no reason to believe that they are inferior, in aught but
happiness and a sphere for goodness, to the same class in
England. The Irish peasant, sir, is rich in virtues, which
you know not of because you know only the worst class of
Irish, and only hear of the rest when they are found want-
ing under the severest temptations. Amongst his virtues
are many which, perhaps, no familiarity would enable yoa
to recognize. I speak of the Irish peasant as a man and
as a Christian, not as a citizen merely. There is a differ-
AUBREY T. DE VERE. 855
ence between public and individual virtues: to the latter
class belong many which, by their own nature, remain
exempt from applause or material reward; and among the
former there are commonly accounted several vices. Self-
confidence, ruthlessness, and greediness—these are not
virtues; but notwithstanding, when associated with a
manliness as willing to suffer as to inflict pain, and an
industry if not disinterested yet dutiful, these defects may
help to swell the prosperity of a nation, as long as she
swims with the tide. Many of the crowning virtues of per-
sonal character may be possessed where several funda-
mental virtues of civil society are wanting.
The Irish peasant has a patience under real sufferings
quite as signal as his impatience under imaginary grie-
vances; and in spite of a complexional conceit not uncom-
mon, he has a moral humility that does not help him to
make his way. He possesses a reverence that will not be
repulsed ; a gratitude that sometimes excites our remorse;
a refinement of sensibility, and even of tact, which re-
minds you that many who toil for bread are the descend-
ants of those who once sat in high places; aspirations that
fly above the mark of national greatness; a faith and char-
ity not common in the modern world; an acknowledged
exemption from sensual habits, both those that pass by
that name, and those that invent fine names for them-
selves; and an extraordinary fidelity to the ties of house-
hold and kindred, the more remarkable from being united
with a versatile intellect, a temperament mercurial as well
as ardent, and an ever salient imagination. These virtues
are not inconsistent with grave faults, but they are virtues
of the first order. I will only add, that if England has wit
enough to make these virtues her friends, she will have con-
ciliated the affections of a people the least self-loving in
the world, and the services of a people amongst whom, in
the midst of much light folly, there is enough of indolent
ability to direct the whole councils of England, and of
three or four kingdoms beside—provided only that Ire-
land be not of the number.
I have already recommended you to study the Irish if
you would learn how to govern Ireland; and though I can-
not undertake to be your master, yet I would seriously
advise you not to allow yourself to dwell only on the worst
856 IRISH LITERATURE.
side of the national character. If you laugh at an Irish
peasant’s helplessness, remember that he is as willing to
help a neighbor as to ask aid; and that he has a remark-
able faculty for doing all business not his own. If you
think him deficient in steadiness under average circum-
stances, remember that he possesses extraordinary re-
source and powers of adaption. If you think him easily
deluded, remember that the same quick and fine tempera-
ment which makes him catch every infection or humor in
the air renders him equally accessible to all good in-
fluences; of which the recent temperance movement is the
most remarkable example exhibited by any modern nation.
You accuse the Irish peasant of want of gravity: one
reason of this characteristic is, that with him imagination
and fancy are faculties not working by themselves, but
diffused through the whole being; and remember that, if
they favor enthusiasm, so on the other hand they protect
from fanaticism. If you speak of his occasional depres-
sion and weakness, you should know that Irish strength
does not consist in robustness, but in elasticity. If you
complain of his want of ambition, remember that this
often proceeds from the genuine independence of a mind
and temperament which possesses too many resources in
themselves to be dependent on outward position; and do
not forget that much of the boasted progress of England
results from no more exalted a cause than from an un-
comfortable habit of body, not easy when at rest. If you
think him deficient in a sound judgment, ask whether his
mental faculties may not be eminently of a subtle and met-
aphysical character, and whether such are not generally
disconnected from a perfect practical judgment.
You are amused because he commits blunders: ask
whether he may not possibly think wrong twice as often
as the English peasant, and yet think right five times as
often, since he thinks tén times as much, and has a rea-
son for everything that he does. You call him idle: ask
whether he does not possess a facility and readiness not
usually united with painstaking qualities; and remember
that, when fairly tried, he by no means wants industry,
though he is deficient in energy. You think him addicted
to fancy rather than realities :—poverty is a great feeder
of enthusiasm. You object to his levity :—competence is
AUBREY T. DE VERE. 857
a sustainer of respectability; and many a man is steadied
by the weight of the cash in his pocket. You call him
wrong-headed : ask whether the state of things around him,
the bequest of past misgovernment, is not so wrong as to
puzzle even the solid sense of many an English statesman,
not inexperienced in affairs; and whether the good inten-
tions and the actions of those who would benefit the Irish
peasant are not sometimes, even now, so strangely at cross
purposes as to make the quiet acceptance of the boon no
easy task. You think him slow to follow your sensible pre-
cepts: remember that the Irish are imitative, and that the
imitative have no great predilection for the didactic vein:
and do not forget that for a considerable time your ex-
ample was less edifying than your present precepts. You
affirm that no one requires discipline so much; remember
that none repays it so well; and that, as to the converse
need, there is no one who requires so little aid to second
his intellectual development. The respect of his neighbor,
you say, is what he hardly seeks: remember how often he
wins his love, and even admiration, without seeking it.
You think that he hangs loosely by his opinions: ask
whether he is not devoted to his attachments. He seems to
you inconsistent in action: reflect whether extreme versa-
tility of mind and consistency of conduct are qualities often
united in one man. You complain of the disposition of the
Trish to collect in mobs: ask whether, if you can once gain
the ear of an Irish mob, it is not far more accessible to
reason than an English one.
I have addressed myself to Irish mobs under various cir-
cumstances in the last two years, and encountered none
that was not amenable. Ask also whether in most coun-
tries the lower orders have not enough to do, as well as
enough to eat in the day, and consequently a disposition to
sleep at night. If half your English population had only to
walk about and form opinions, how do you think you would
get on? You say that the Irish have no love of fair play,
and that three men of one faction will fall on one man of
another: ask those who reflect as well as observe, whether
this proceeds wholly from want of fair play or from other
causes beside. Ask whether in Ireland the common senti-
ment of race, kindred, or clan, does not prevail with an
intensity not elsewhere united with a perfect appreciation
858 IRISH LITERATURE.
of responsibilities and immunities; and whether an Irish
beggar will not give you as hearty a blessing in return for
a halfpenny bestowed on another of his order as on him-
self. Sympathy includes a servile element, and servile
sympathy will always lead to injustice ;—thus I have heard
a hundred members of Parliament (and of party) drown
in one cry, like that of a well-managed pack, the voice of
some member whom they disapproved, and whom probably
they considered less as a man than as a limb of a hated
enemy. Sympathy, however, often ministers to justice
also, as you find on asking an Irish gentlemen whether he
has not often been astonished at that refinement of fair
play with which an Irish peasant makes allowances for
the difficulties of some great neighbor, whose aid is his
only hope.
THE SUN GOD.
I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood
High in his luminous car, himself more bright—
An Archer of immeasurable might;
On his left shoulder hung his quivered load,
Spurned by his steeds the eastern mountain glowed,
Forward his eager eye and brow of light
He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed,
Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night.
No wings profaned that godlike form; around
His neck high held an ever-moving crowd
Of locks hung glistening; while such perfect sound
Fell from his bowstring that th’ ethereal dome
Thrilled as a dewdrop; and each passing cloud
Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.
THE LITTLE BLACK ROSE.
The Little Black Rose 1 shall be red at last;
What made it black but the March wind dry,
And the tear of the widow that fell on it fast?
It shall redden the hills when June is nigh!
1 Mystical names of Ireland frequently occur in Gaelic poetry.
AUBREY T. DE VERE. 859
The Silk of the Kine shall rest at last;
What drove her forth but the dragon fly?
In the golden vale she shall feed full fast,
With her mild gold horn and her slow dark eye.
The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last!
The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die!
This song is secret. Mine ear it passed
In a wind o’er the plains at Athenry.
DIRGE OF RORY O’MORE.
A. D, 1642.
Up the sea-saddened valley, at evening’s decline,
A heifer walks lowing—“ the Silk of the Kine;”
From the deep to the mountains she roams, and again
From the mountain’s green urn to the purple-rimmed main.
What seek’st thou, sad mother? Thine own is not thine!
He dropped from the headland—he sank in the brine!
°T was a dream! but in dreams at thy foot did he follow
Through the meadow-sweet on by the marish and mallow!
Was he thine? Have they slain him? Thou seek’st him, not
knowing
Thyself, too, art theirs—thy sweet breath and sad lowing!
Thy gold horn is theirs, thy dark eye and thy silk,
And that which torments thee, thy milk, is their milk!
?T was no dream, Mother Land! ’T was no dream, Innisfail!
Hope dreams, but grief dreams not—the grief of the Gael!
From Leix and Ikerrin to Donegal’s shore
Rolls the dirge of thy last and thy bravest—O’More!
SONG.
1.
When I was young, I said to Sorrow:
“Come and I will play with thee.”
He is near me now all day,
And at night returns to say:
“I will come again to-morrow—
I will come and stay with thee.”
860 IRISH LITERATURE.
IL
Through the woods we walk together;
His soft footsteps rustle nigh me;
To shield an unregarded head
He hath built a winter shed;
And all night in rainy weather
I hear his gentle breathings by me,
SORROW.
Count each affliction, whether light or grave,
God’s messenger sent down to thee; do thou
With courtesy receive him; rise and bow;
And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;
Then lay before him all thou hast: allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul’s marmoreal calmness; grief should be—
Like joy—majestic, equable, sedate,
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;
Strong to consume small troubles; to commend
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.
THE WEDDING OF THE CLANS.
I go to knit two clans together,
Our clan and this clan unseen of yore.
Our clan fears naught; but I go, oh, whither?
This day I go from my mother’s door.
Thou, redbreast, singest the old song over,
Though many a time hast thou sung it before;
They never sent thee to some strange new lover
To sing a new song by my mother’s door.
I stepped from my little room down by the ladder—
The ladder that never so shook before;
I was sad last night, to-day I am sadder,
Because I go from my mother’s door.
AUBREY T. DE VERE. 861
‘The last snow melts upon bush and bramble,
The gold bars shine on the forest’s floor;
Shake not, thou leaf; it is I must tremble,
Because I go from my mother’s door.
From a Spanieh sailor a dagger I bought me,
I trailed a rosebud our gray bawn o’er;
The creed and the letters our old bard taught me;
My days were sweet by my mother’s door.
My little white goat, that with raised feet huggest
The oak stock, thy horns in the ivy frore;
Could I wrestle like thee—how the wreaths thou tuggest !—
I never would move from my mother’s door.
Oh, weep no longer, my nurse and mother;
My foster-sister, weep not so sore;
You cannot come with me, Ir, my brother—
Alone I go from my mother’s door.
Farewell, my wolf-hound, that slew MacOwing,
As he caught me and far through the thickets bore,
My heifer Alb in the green vale lowing,
My cygnet’s nest upon Loma’s shore.
He has killed ten Chiefs, this Chief that plights me,
His hand is like that of the giant Balor;
But I fear his kiss, and his beard affrights me,
And the great stone dragon above his door.
Had I daughters nine, with me they should tarry;
They should sing old songs; they should dance at my door.
They should grind at the quern, no need to marry!
Oh, when shall this marriage day be o’er?
Had I buried, like Moirin, three fates already,
I might say, Three husbands, then why not four?
But my hand is cold, and my foot unsteady,
Because I never was married before!
FLOWERS I WOULD BRING.
Flowers I would bring if flowers could make thee fairer, .
And music, if the Muse were dear to thee;
(For loving these would make thee love the bearer)
But the sweetest songs forget their melody,
862 IRISH LITERATURE.
And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer :—
A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
Blushed as she bent; imploring me to spare her,
Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee,
What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee;
When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
And all old poets and old songs adore thee;
And love to thee is naught; from passionate mood
Secured by joy’s complacent plenitude!
SONG.
Seek not the tree of silkiest bark
And balmiest bud,
To carve her name while yet ’t is dark
Upon the wood!
The world is full of noble tasks
And wreaths hard won:
Each work demands strong hearts, strong hands,
Till day is done.
Sing not that violet-veined skin,
That cheek’s pale roses,
The lily of that form wherein
Her soul reposes!
Forth to the fight, true man! true knight!
The clash of arms
Shall more prevail than whispered tale,
To win her charms,
The warrior for the True, the Right,
Fights in Love’s name;
The love that lures thee from that fight
Lures thee to shame:
That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves
The spirit free—
That love, or none, is fit for one
Man-shaped like thee,
AUBREY T. DE VERE.
THE LONG DYING.
The dying tree no pang sustains;
But, by degrees relinquishing
Companionship of beams and rains,
Forgets the balmy breath of spring.
From off th’ enringéd trunk that keeps
His annual count of ages gone,
Th’ embrace of summer slowly slips ;—
Still stands the giant in the sun.
His myriad lips, that sucked of old
The dewy breasts of heaven, are dry;
His roots remit the crag and mould;
Yet painless is his latest sigh.
He falls; the forests round him roar ;—
Ere long on quiet bank and copse
Untrembling moonbeams rest; once more
The startled babe his head down drops.
But ah for one who never drew .
From age to age a painless breath!
And ah the old wrong ever new!
And ah the many-centuried death!
MICHAEL DOHENY.
(1805—1868,) .
MICHAEL DOHENY was born at Brookhill, County Tipperary, in
1808. With very little schooling he went to London and studied
law, supporting himself as a Parliamentary reporter. He after-
ward settled in Cashel as a barrister and became prominent as a
local and national politician, He became connected with the Young
Ireland party in the forties and was a frequent contributor to The
Nation over the signature of '' Eiranach.”
After the failure of the insurrection of 1848 a reward of £800
(1,500) was on his head for some time. He at last succeeded in
evading the police and escaped to New York in 1849, where he be-
came a lawyer and joined John Mahoney in founding Fenianism.
He afterward fought in the Civil War. He is best known by a
small prose work, ‘The Felon’s Track,’ published after his death,
and a few beautiful poems. He died April 1, 1863.
A CUSHLA GAL MO CHREE.!
The long, long wished-for hour has come,
Yet come, astor, in vain;
And left thee but the wailing hum
Of sorrow and of pain;
My light of life, my only love!
Thy portion, sure, must be
Man’s scorn below, God’s wrath above—
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
I’ve given for thee my early prime,
And manhood’s teeming years;
I’ve blessed thee in my merriest time,
And shed with thee my tears;
And, mother, though thou cast away
The child who’d die for thee,
My fondest wishes still should pray
For cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
For thee I've tracked the mountain’s sides,
And slept within the brake,
More lonely than the swan that glides
On Lua’s fairy lake.
34 cushla gal mo ohree, neight vein of my henrt,
oaviesy Google
oaviesy Google
oaviesy Google
oaviesy Google
MICHAEL DOHENY.
The rich have spurned me from their door,
Because I’d make thee free;
Yet still I love thee more and more,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
I’ve run the outlaw’s wild career,
And borne his load of ill;
His rocky couch—his dreamy fear—
With fixed, sustaining will;
And should his last dark chance befall,
Even that shall welcome be;
In death I ’d love thee best of all,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
°T was told of thee the world around,
°T was hoped for thee by all,
That with one gallant sunward bound
Thou’dst burst long ages’ thrall;
Thy faith was tied, alas! and those
Who periled all for thee
Were cursed and branded as thy foes,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
What fate is thine, unhappy Isle,
When even the trusted few
Would pay thee back with hate and guile,
When most they should be true!
°T was not my strength or spirit quailed,
Or those who’d die for thee—
Who loved thee truly have not failed,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!
EDWARD DOWDEN.
(1848 —)
Epwarp Dowpen was born in Cork, May 8, 1848, where he re-
ceived his early education. He entered Trinity College in 1859. In
1867 he became professor of English literature. The scholarship of
his literary work has won him many honors. In 1888 he was chosen
President of the English Goethe Society, to succeed Professor Miiller.
The following year he was appointed first Taylorian lecturer in the
Taylor Institute, Oxford. Royal Irish Academy has bestowed
the Cunningham gold medal upon him, and he has also received
the honorary degree LL.D. of the Universities of Edinburgh and
Princeton. .
Professor Dowden has been a frequent contributor of critical
essays to all the high-class magazines—the Contem; iy, Fort-
nightly, Westminster, Fraser's, and Cornhill. His it book was
publis ed in 1875—' Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, a Critical
tudy.’ This is a very remarkable contribution to the literature on
the great English dramatist, and has already taken rank among the
standard works on the subject. It is now in its fourth edition, and
has been translated into German and Russian. A volume of
‘Poems’ appeared in 1876, and has passed into a second edition.
Of his poetry, Mr. W. MacNeile Dixon says in ‘ A Treasury of Irish
Poetry’: ‘‘ He recalls to us Marvell’s fine simplicity, his unfailing
sense for the beautiful, his pervading spirituality, his touch of reso-
lute aloofness from the haste and fever of life, his glad and serious
temper, his unaffected charm of phrase and movement.”
"Studies in Literature’ (1875) contained a number of suggestive
criticisms on the chief literary masters of our time—the most re-
markable perhaps being that on George Eliot. Mr. Dowden has,
besides, contributed a Shakespeare Primer to the ‘ Literature Prim-
ers’ edited by the well-known historian, Mr. J. R. Green, and he was
choeen to contribute ‘ Southey ’ to the series of ‘ English Men of Let-
ters,’ under the guidance of Mr. John Morley. In addition to the
books above mentioned he has written ‘The Life of Shelley,’ ‘ Trans-
scripts and Studies,’ ‘New Studies in Literature,’ ‘The French
Revolution and English Literature,’ ‘A History of French Litera-
ture.’ He has edited Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnets,’ Southey’s ‘Corre-
ndence with Caroline Bowles,’‘The Passionate Pilgrim,’ ‘The
rrespondence of Henry Taylor,’ and a collection of lyrical
THE INTERPRETATION OF LITERATURE.
From ‘Transcripts and Studies.’
The happiest moment in a critic’s hours of study is
when, seemingly by some divination, but really as the re-
866
EDWARD DOWDEN. 867
sult of patient observation and thought, he lights upon the
central motive of a great work. Then, of a sudden, order
begins to form itself from the crowd and chaos of his im-
pressions and ideas. There is a moving hither and thither,
a grouping or co-ordinating of all his recent experiences,
which goes on of its own accord; and every instant his
vision becomes clearer, and new meanings disclose them-
selves in what had been lifeless and unilluminated. It
seems as if he could even stand by the artist’s side and
co-operate with him in the process of creating. With such
a sense of joy upon him, the critic will think it no hard
task to follow the artist to the sources from whence he
dréw his material,—it may be some dull chapter in an
ancient chronicle, or some gross tale of passion by an
Italian novelist,—and he will stand by and watch with
exquisite pleasure the artist handling that crude material,
and refashioning and refining it, and breathing into it the
breath of a higher life. Even the minutest difference of
text between an author’s earlier and later draft, or a first
and second edition, has now become a point not for dull
commentatorship, but a point of life, at which he may touch
with his finger the pulse of the creator in his fervor of
creation.
From each single work of a great author we advance to
his total work, and thence to the man himself,—to the
heart and brain from which all this manifold world of
wisdom and wit and passion and beauty has proceeded.
Here again, before we address ourselves to the interpre-
tation of the author’s mind, we patiently submit ourselves
to a vast series of impressions. And in accordance with
Bacon’s maxim that a prudent interrogation is the half
of knowledge, it is right to provide ourselves with a number
of well-considered questions which we may address to our
author. Let us cross-examine him as students of mental
and moral science, and find replies in his written words.
Are his senses vigorous and fine? Does he see color as
well as form? Does he delight in all that appeals to the
sense of hearing—the voices of nature, and the melody and
harmonies of the art of man?
Thus Wordsworth, exquisitely organized for enjoying
and interpreting all natural and, if we may so say, homeless
and primitive sounds, had but little feeling for the delights
868 IRISH LITERATURE.
of music. Can he enrich his poetry by gifts from the sense
of smell, as did Keats; or is his nose like Wordsworth’s,
an idle promontory projecting into a desert air? Has he
like Browning a vigorous pleasure in all strenuous muscu-
lar movements; or does he like Shelley live rapturously in
the finest nervous thrills? How does he experience and in-
terpret the feeling of sex, and in what parts of his entire
nature does that feeling find its elevating connections and
associations? What are his special intellectual powers?
Is his intellect combative or contemplative? What are the
laws which chiefly preside over the associations of his
ideas? What are the emotions which he feels most
strongly? and how do his emotions coalesce with one an-
other? Wonder, terror, awe, love, grief, hope, despond-
ency, the benevolent affections, admiration, the religious
sentiment, the moral sentiment, the emotion of power,
irascible emotion, ideal emotion—how do these make them-
selves felt in and through his writings? What is his feel-
ing for the beautiful, the sublime, the ludicrous? Is he of
weak or vigorous will? In the conflict of motives, which
class of motives with him is likely to predominate? Is he
framed to believe or framed to doubt? Is he prudent, just,
temperate, or the reverse of these? These and such-like
questions are not to be crudely and formally proposed, but
are to be used with tact; nor should the critic press for
hard and definite answers, but know how skillfully to
glean its meaning from an evasion. He is a dull cross-
examiner who will invariably follow the scheme which he
has thought out and prepared beforehand, and who cannot
vary his questions to surprise or beguile the truth from
an unwilling witness. But the tact which comes from nat-
ural gift and from experience may be well supported by
something of method,—method well hidden away from the
surface and from sight.
This may be termed the psychological method of study.
But we may also follow a more objective method. Taking
the chief themes with which literature and art are conver-
sant—God, external nature, humanity—we may inquire
how our author has dealt with each of these. What is his
theology, or his philosophy of the universe? By which we
mean no abstract creed or doctrine, but the tides and cur-
rents of feeling and of faith, as well as the tendencies and
EDWARD DOWDEN. 869
conclusions of the intellect. Under what aspect has this
goodly frame of things, in whose midst we are, revealed
itself to him? How has he regarded and interpreted the
life of man?
Under each of these great themes a multitude of subor-
dinate topics are included. And alike in this and in what
we have termed the psychological method of study, we
shall gain double results if we examine a writer’s works
in the order of their chronology, and thus become ac-
quainted with the growth and development of his powers,
and the widening and deepening of his relations with man,
with external nature, and with that Supreme Power, un-
known yet well known, of which nature and man are the
manifestation. As to the study of an artist’s technical
qualities, this, by virtue of the fact that he is an artist, is of
capital importance; and it may often be associated with
the study of that which his technique is employed to ex-
press and render—the characteristics of his mind, and of
the vision which he has attained of the external universe,
of humanity, and of God. Of all our study, the last end
and aim should be to ascertain how a great writer or artist
has served the life of man; to ascertain this, to bring home
to ourselves as large a portion as may be of the gain where-
with he has enriched human life, and to render access to
that store of wisdom, passion, and power, easier and surer
for others.
ENGLAND IN SHAKESPEARE’S YOUTH.
In the closing years of the sixteenth century the life
of England ran high. The revival of learning had en-
riched the national mind with a store of new ideas and
images; the reformation of religion had been accomplished,
and its fruits were now secure; three conspiracies against
the Queen’s life had recently been foiled, and her rival,
the Queen of Scots, had perished on the scaffold; the huge
attempt of Spain against the independence of England
had been defeated by the gallantry of English seamen,
aided by the winds of heaven. English adventurers were
exploring untraveled lands and distant oceans; English
citizens were growing in wealth and importance; the far-
, i.
870 IRISH LITERATURE.
mers made the soil give up twice its former yield; the
nobility, however fierce their private feuds and rivalries
might be, gathered around the Queen as their center.
It was felt that England was a power in the continent of
Europe. Men were in a temper to think human life, with
its action and its passions, a very important and interest-
ing thing. They did not turn away from this world, and
despise it in comparison with a heavenly country, as did
many of the finest souls in the Middle Ages; they did not,
like the writers of the age of Queen Anne, care only for
“the ‘town ”; it was man they cared for, and the whole
of manhood—its good and evil, its greatness and gro-
tesqueness, its laughter and its tears.
When men cared thus about human life, their imagina-
tion craved living pictures and visions of it. They liked
to represent to themselves men and women in all pas-
sionate and mirthful aspects and circumstances of life.
Sculpture which the Greeks so loved would not have sat-
isfied them, for it is too simple and too calm; music
would not have been sufficient, for it is too purely an ex-
pression of feelings, and says too little about actions and
events. The art which suited the temper of their imagina-
tion was the drama. In the drama they saw men and
women, alive in action, in suffering, changing forever
from mood to mood, from attitude to attitude; they saw
these men and women solitary, conversing with their
own hearts—in pairs and in groups, acting one upon
another ; in multitudes, swayed hither and thither by their
leaders.
THE HUMOR OF SHAKESPEARE.
From ‘Shakespeare : a Critical Study of His Mind and Art.’
A study of Shakespeare which fails to take account of
Shakespeare’s humor must remain essentially incomplete.
The character and spiritual history of a man who is en-
dowed with a capacity for humorous appreciation of the
world must differ throughout, and in every particular,
from that of the man whose moral nature has never
rippled over with genial laughter. At whatever final issue
EDWARD DOWDEN. 871
Shakespeare arrived after long spiritual travail as to
the attainment of his life, that precise issue, rather than
another, was arrived at in part by virtue of the fact of
Shakespeare’s humor. In the composition of forces which
determined the orbit traversed by the mind of the poet,
this must be allowed for as a force among others, in im-
portance not the least, and efficient at all times even when
little apparent.
A man whose visage “ holds one stern intent” from day
to day, and whose joy becomes at times almost a super-
natural rapture, may descend through circles of hell to the
narrowest and the lowest; he may mount from sphere to
sphere of Paradise until he stands within the light of the
Divine Majesty; but he will hardly succeed in presenting
us with an adequate image of life as it is on this earth of
ours, in its oceanic amplitude and variety. A few men of
genius there have been, who with vision penetrative as
lightning have gazed as it were through life, at some eter-
nal significances of which life is the symbol. Intent upon
its sacred meaning, they have had no eye to note the forms
of the grotesque hieroglyph of human existence. Such men
are not framed for laughter. To this little group the
creator of Falstaff, of Bottom, and of Touchstone does not
belong.
Shakespeare, who saw life more widely and wisely than
any other of the seers, could laugh. That is a comfortable
fact to bear in mind; a fact which serves to rescue us from
the domination of intense and narrow natures, who claim
authority by virtue of their grasp of one-half of the
realities of our existence and their denial of the rest.
Shakespeare could laugh. But we must go on to ask,
“What did he laugh at? and what was the manner of his
laughter?” There are as many modes of laughter as there
are facets of the common soul of humanity, to reflect the
humorous appearances of the world. Hogarth, in one of
his pieces of coarse yet subtile engraving, has presented a
group of occupants of the pit of a theater, sketched during
the performance of some broad comedy or farce. What
proceeds upon the stage is invisible and undiscoverable,
gave as we catch its reflection on the faces of the spectators,
in the same way that we infer a sunset from the evening
flame upon windows that front the west.
872 IRISH LITERATURE.
Each laughing face in Hogarth’s print exhibits a dif-
ferent mode or a different stage of the risible paroxysm.
There is the habitual enjoyer of the broad comic, aban-
doned to his mirth, which is open and unashamed; mirth
which he is evidently a match for, and able to sustain.
By his side is a companion female portrait—a woman
with head thrown back to ease the violence of the guffaw;
all her loose redundant flesh is tickled into an orgasm of
merriment; she is fairly overcome. On the other side sits
the spectator who has passed the climax of his laughter;
he wipes the tears from his eyes, and is on the way to regain
an insecure and temporary composure. Below appears a
girl of eighteen or twenty, whose vacancy of intellect is
captured and occupied by the innocuous folly still in pro-
gress; she gazes on expectantly, assured that a new blos-
som of the wonder of absurdity is about to display itself.
Her father, a man who does not often surrender himself
to an indecent convulsion, leans his face upon his hand and
with the other steadies himself by grasping one of the iron
spikes that inclose the orchestra. In the right corner sits
the humorist, whose eyes, around which the wrinkles gath-
er, are half closed, while he already goes over the jest
a second time in his imagination. At the opposite side
an elderly woman is seen, past the period when animal
violences are possible, laughing because she knows there
is something to laugh at, though she is too dull-witted to
know precisely what. One spectator, as we guess from his
introverted air, is laughing to think what somebody else
would think of this. Finally, the thin-lipped, perk-nosed
person of refinement looks aside, and by his critical in-
difference condemns the broad, injudicious mirth of the
company.
All these laughers of Hogarth are very commonplace,
and some are very vulgar persons; one trivial, ludicrous
spectacle is the occasion of their mirth. When from such
laughter as this we turn to the laughter of men of genius,
who gaze at the total play of the world’s life; and when we
listen to this, as with the ages it goes on gathering and
swelling, our sense of hearing is enveloped and almost
annihilated by the chorus of mock and jest, of antic
and buffoonery, of tender mirth and indignant satire, of
monstrous burlesque and sly absurdity, of desperate mis-
EDWARD DOWDEN. 873
anthropic derision and genial affectionate caressing of
human imperfection and human folly. We hear from
behind the mask the enormous laughter of Aristophanes,
ascending peal above peal until it passes into jubilant
ecstasy, or from the uproar springs some exquisite lyric
strain. We hear laughter of passionate indignation from
Juvenal, the indignation of “ the ancient and free soul of
the dead republics.”
And there is Rabelais, with his huge buffoonery, and the
earnest eyes intent on freedom, which look out at us in
the midst of the zany’s tumblings and indecencies. And
Cervantes, with his refined Castilian air and deep melan-
choly mirth, at odds with the enthusiasm which is dearest
to his soul. And Moliére, with his laughter of unerring
good sense, undeluded by fashion or vanity or folly or
hypocrisy, and brightly mocking these into modesty. And
Milton, with his fierce objurgatory laughter,—Elijah-like
insult against the enemies of freedom and of England.
And Voltaire, with his quick intellectual scorn and eager
malice of the brain. And there is the urbane and amiable
play of Addison’s invention, not capable of large achieve-
ment, but stirring the corners of the mouth with a humane
smile,—gracious gayety for the breakfast-tables of Eng-
land. And Fielding’s careless mastery of the whole broad
common field of mirth. And Sterne’s exquisite curiosity
of oddness, his subtile extravagances and humors prepense.
And there is the tragic laughter of Swift, which announces
the extinction of reason, and loss beyond recovery of human
faith and charity and hope. How in this chorus of laugh-
ters, joyous and terrible, is the laughter of Shakespeare
distinguishable?
In the first place, the humor of Shakespeare, like his to-
tal genius, is many-sided. He does not pledge himself as
dramatist to any one view of human life. If we open a
novel by Charles Dickens, we feel assured beforehand that
we are condemned to an exuberance of philanthropy; we
know how the writer will insist that we must all be good
friends, all be men and brothers, intoxicated with the de-
light of one another’s presence; we expect him to hold out
the right hand of fellowship to man, woman, and child;
we are prepared for the bacchanalia of benevolence. The
lesson we have to learn from this teacher is, that with the
874 IRISH LITERATURE.
exception of a few inevitable and incredible monsters of
cruelty, every man naturally engendered of the offspring of
Adam is of his own nature inclined to every amiable virtue.
Shakespeare abounds in kindly mirth: he receives an ex-
quisite pleasure from the alert wit and bright good sense of
a Rosalind; he can dandle a fool as tenderly as any nurse
qualified to take a baby from the birth can deal with her
charge. But Shakespeare is not pledged to deep-dyed ultra-
amiability. With Jacques, he can rail at the world while
remaining curiously aloof from all deep concern about its
interests, this way or that. With Timon he can turn upon
the world with a rage no less than that of Swift, and dis-
cover in man and woman a creature as abominable as the
Yahoo. In other words, the humor of Shakespeare, like his
total genius, is dramatic.
Then again, although Shakespeare laughs incompara-
bly, mere laughter wearies him. The only play of Shake-
Speare’s, out of nearly forty, which is farcical,— The
Comedy of Errors,’—was written in the poet’s earliest
period of authorship, and was formed upon the suggestion
of a preceding piece. It has been observed with truth by
Gervinus that the farcical incidents of this play have been
connected by Shakespeare with a tragic background, which
is probably his own invention. With beauty, or with pa-
thos, or with thought, Shakespeare can mingle his mirth;
and then he is happy, and knows how to deal with play
of wit or humorous characterization ; but an entirely comic
subject somewhat disconcerts the poet. On this ground,
if no other were forthcoming, it might be suspected that
‘The Taming of the Shrew’ was not altogether the work
of Shakespeare’s hand. The secondary intrigues and
minor incidents were of little interest to the poet. But in
the buoyant force of Petruchio’s character, in his sub-
duing tempest of high spirits, and in the person of the
foiled revoltress against the law of sex, who carries into
her wifely loyalty the same energy which she had shown
in her virgin sauvagerie, there were elements of human
character in which the imagination of the poet took delight.
Unless it be its own excess, however, Shakespeare's
laughter seems to fear nothing. It does not, when it has
once arrived at its full development, fear enthusiasm, or
passion, or tragic intensity; nor do these fear it. The tra-
EDWARD DOWDEN. 875
ditions of the English drama had favored. the juxtaposi-
tion of the serious and comic: but it was reserved for
Shakespeare to make each a part of the other; to inter-
penetrate tragedy with comedy, and comedy with tragic
earnestness.
SHAKESPEARE’S PORTRAITURE OF WOMEN.
From ‘ Transcripts and Studies.’
Of all the daughters of his imagination, which did
Shakespeare love the best? Perhaps we shall not err if we
say one of the latest born of them all,—our English
Imogen. And what most clearly shows us how Shake-
speare loved Imogen is this—he has given her faults, and
has made them exquisite, so that we love her better for
their sake. No one has so quick and keen a sensibility to
whatever pains and to whatever gladdens as she. To her
a word is a blow; and as she is quick in her sensibility, so
she is quick in her perceptions, piercing at once through the
Queen’s false show of friendship; quick in her contempt
for what is unworthy, as for all professions of love from
the clown-prince, Cloten; quick in her resentment, as
when she discovers the unjust suspicions of Posthumus.
Wronged she is indeed by her husband, but in her haste
she too grows unjust; yet he is dearer to us for the sake of
this injustice, proceeding as it does from the sensitiveness
of her love. It is she, to whom a word is a blow, who
actually receives a buffet from her husband’s hand; but
for Imogen it is a blessed stroke, since it is the evidence
of his loyalty and zeal on her behalf. In a moment he is
forgiven, and her arms are round his neck.
Shakespeare made so many perfect women unhappy that
he owes us some amende. And he has made that amende
by letting us see one perfect woman supremely happy.
Shall our last glance at Shakespeare’s plays show us
Florizel at the rustic merry-making, receiving blossoms
from the hands of Perdita? or Ferdinand and Miranda
playing chess in Prospero’s cave, and winning one a king
and one a queen, while the happy fathers gaze in from
876 IRISH LITERATURE.
the entrance of the cave? We can see a more delightful
sight than these—Imogen with her arms around the neck
of Posthumus, while she puts an edge upon her joy by the
playful challenge and mock reproach—
“Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?
Think that you are upon. the rock, and now á
Throw me again ;
and he responds— | there like a fruit soul,
Hang there like a fruit, m;
Till the tree die.” á
We shall find in all Shakespeare no more blissful crea-
tures than these two.
ABOARD THE “SEA-SWALLOW.”
The gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs
Lay on the water, violet-dark ;
The pennon drooped, the sail fell in,
And slowly moved our bark.
A golden day; the summer dreamed
In heaven and on the whispering sea,
Within our hearts the summer dreamed;
The hours had ceased to be.
Then rose the girls with bonnets loosed,
And shining tresses lightly blown,
Alice and Adela, and sang
A song of Mendelssohn.
Oh! sweet and sad and wildly clear,
Through summer air it sinks and swells,
Wild with a measureless desire
And sad with all farewells.
OASIS,
Let them go by—the heats, the doubts, the strife;
I can sit here and care not for them now,
Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life
Once more—I know not how.
MONNA LISA
Also called “ La Giaconda,” from the famous painting
by Leonarda da Vinci in the Louvre, Paris.
EDWARD DOWDEN. 877
There is a murmur in my heart; I hear
Faint—oh! so faint—some air I used to sing;
It stirs my sense; and odors dim and dear
The meadow-breezes bring.
Just this way did the quiet twilights fade
Over the fields and happy homes of men,
While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade,
Long since—I know not when.
LEONARDO'S “MONNA LISA.”?
Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair
Of knowing thee be absolute: I wait
Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate
Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?
Secret perfection! Mystery too fair!
Tangle the sense no more, lest I should hate
The delicate tyranny, the inviolate
Poise of thy folded hands, the fallen hair.
Nay, nay,—I wrong thee with rough words; still be
Serene, victorious, inaccessible;
Still smile but speak not; lightest irony
Lark ever ’neath thy eyelids’ shadow; still
O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy,
Allure us and reject us at thy will!
1 This famous painting, sometimes called La Gioconda, was bought by
Francis L for four thousand gold florins, and is now one of the glories of
the Louvre. In Madonna the artist seems to have found a sitter
whose features in a singular degree the intellectual charm in
- Which he delighted, and in whose smile was realized that inward, haunt-
ing, m; e: ion which had been his ideal. It is said that he
ee aon ie daring some portion of four successive years, caus-
ing music to be played during the sittings, that the rapt expression might
not fade from off ner countenance.
BARTHOLOMEW DOWLING.
(1828—1868.)
BaRTHOLOMEW DOWLING was born in Listowel, County Kerry,
in 1823. He was taken to Canada by his parents when a boy
and was partly educated there. He returned to Ireland on the
death of his father and became clerk to the treasurer of the Cor-
poration of Limerick.
In 1857 he came to America and in mining, farming, and
ionainn, He was editor of The San Francisco Monitor when
e died in 1863. He contributed to The Nation over the signature
of “The Southern.” He was a linguist and a facile writer.
He is best known by his lyric ‘ The Brigade at Fontenoy.’
THE BRIGADE AT FONTENOY.
(May 11, 1745.)
By our camp-fires rose a murmur,
At the dawning of the day,
And the tread of many footsteps
Spoke the advent of the fray;
And, as we took our places,
Few and stern were our words,
While some were tightening horse-girths
And some were girding swords.
The trumpet blast has sounded
Our footmen to array—
The willing steed has bounded,
Impatient for the fray—
The green flag is unfolded,
While rose the cry of joy—
“Heaven speed dear Ireland’s banner
To-day at Fontenoy!”
We looked upon that banner,
And the memory arose.
Of our homes and perished kindred
Where the Lee or Shannon flows;
We looked upon that banner,
And we swore to God on high
To smite to-day the Saxon’s might—
To conquer or to die.
878
BARTHOLOMEW DOWLING. 879
Loud swells the charging trumpet—
°T is a voice from our own land—
God of battles! God of vengeance!
Guide to-day the patriot’s brand!
There are stains to wash away,
There are memories to destroy,
In the best blood of the Briton
To-day at Fontenoy.
Plunge deep the fiery rowels
In a thousand reeking flanks—
Down, chivalry of Ireland,
Down on the British ranks!
Now shall their serried columns
Beneath our sabers reel—
Through their ranks, then, with the war-horse
Through their bosoms with the steel.
With one shout for good King Louis
And the fair land of the vine,
Like the wrathful Alpine tempest
We swept upon their line—
Then ran along the battle-field
Triumphant our hurrah,
And we smote them down, still cheering,
“ Erin, slangthagal go bragh!”+
As prized as is the blessing
From an agéd father’s lip—
As welcome as the haven
To the tempest-driven ship—
As dear as to the lover
The smile of gentle maid—
Is this day of long-sought vengeance
To the swords of the Brigade.
See their shattered forces flying,
A broken, routed line—
See, England, what brave laurels
For your brow to-day we twine.
Oh, thrice blest the hour that witnessed
The Briton turn to flee
From the chivalry of Erin,
And France’s fleur-de-lis.
1 Erin . . . bragh, Erin, your bright health forever.
IRISH LITERATURE.
As we lay beside our camp fires,
‘When the sun had passed away,
And thought upon our brethren
That had perished in the fray—
We prayed to God to grant us,
And then we’d die with joy,
One day upon our own dear land
Like this of Fontenoy.
datizeaty Google
le
THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY
After the famous painting by Horace Vernet in the Vereailles
Museum
Fontenoy is a little village in Belgium, famous for the
battle fought there, April 30, 1745, between the Eng-
lish, Dutch, Hanoverians, and the French. With the aid
of the Irish Brigade, the allies were completely routed.
‘The English broke before the lrish bayonets, and George
IL. on hearing of the disaster, said, “Cursed be the laws
that deprive me of such soldiers.” The Irish lost one-
quarter of their officers and one-third of theirmen. Many
Irish poets and authors have celebrated the battle in song
and story.
oaviesy Google
datizeaty Google
le
RICHARD DOWLING.
(1846—1898.)
RicHARD DowLina was born in Clonmel, June 8, 1846. He was
educated in Clonmel, Waterford, and Limerick. He was intended
for the legal profession, but drifted into journalism, joining the
staff of the Dublin Nation. He then edited a comic periodical—
Zozimus—to which he contributed a number of humorous essays ;
and afterward he was the chief spirit in another entitled ‘Treland’s
Eye. In 1874 he went to London and became a contributor to The
Iustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. Among other sketches,
he published in that journal ‘Mr. Andrew O’Rourke’s Ramblings.’
He started and edited Yorick, a comic paper which had a brief ex-
istence of six months, but it was not till 1879 that Dowling may be
said to have had his first greats success. In that year Messrs. Tins-
ley Brothers published ‘The Mystery of Killard.’ This work was
written in 1875-76, but the author sought then in vain for a pub-
lisher. The central idea of the work—the abnormal nature of a
deaf-mute, which leads him to hate his own child because the child
can hear and speak—is one of the most original in literature, and
there is an atmosphere of weirdness about the whole story which
deeply im impresses the imagination.
Dowling was the author of many novels, plays, poems, etc.,
but there is perhaps nothing by which he is better remembered th: an
by the book of essays, ‘On Babies and Ladders,’ which is full
quaint humor and fancy.
A GUIDE TO IGNORANCE.
From ‘Ignorant Essays.’
As a boy I was averse from study; and since I have
grown to manhood I have acquired so little substantive in-
formation that I could write down in a bold hand on one
page of this book every single fact, outside facts of per-
sonal experience, of which I am Possessed,
I know that the Norman invasion occurred in 1066, and
the Great Fire in 1666. I know that gunpowder is com-
posed of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, and sausages of
minced meat and bread under the name of Tommy. I am
aware Milton and Shakespeare were poets, and that needle-
grinders are short lived. I know that the primest brands of
three-shilling champagnes are made in London. I can
give the Latin for seven words, and the French for four.
b6 881
882 IRISH LITERATURE.
I can repeat the multiplication table (with the pence) up
to six times. I know the mere names of a number of people
and things; but, as far as clear and definite information
goes, I don’t believe I could double the above brief list.
I am, I think, therefore, warranted in concluding that few
men can have a more close or exhaustive personal ac-
quaintance with ignorance. If you want learning at sec-
ond hand you must go to the learned: if you want ignor-
ance at first hand you cannot possibly do better than come
to me.
In the first place let us consider the “ Injury of Knowl-
edge.” How much better off the king would be if he had
no knowledge! Suppose his mental ken had never been
directed to any period before the dawn of his own memory,
he would have no disquieting thoughts of the trouble into
which Charles I. or Richard II. drifted. He would be filled
with no envy of the good old King John, who, from four
or five ounces of iron in the form of thumb-screws, and a
few hundredweight of rich Jew, filled up the royal pockets
as often as they showed any signs of growing empty. And,
above all, he would be spared the misery of committing
dates to memory. How it must limit the happiness of a
constitutional sovereign to know anything about the con-
stitution! Why should he be burdened with the conscious-
ness of rights and prerogatives?
Would he not be much happier if he might smoke his
cigar in his garden without the fear of the Speaker or the
Lord Chancellor before his eyes? The Commons want
their Speaker, the Lords want their Lord Chancellor—let
them have them. The king wants neither. Why should he
be troubled with any knowledge of either? Although he is
a king is he not a man and a brother also? Why should
he be worried out of his life with reasons for all he does?
The king feels he can do no wrong. That ought to be
enough for him. Most men believe the same thing of
themselves, but few others share the faith. The king can
do no wrong, then in mercy’s name let the man alone. Sup-
pose it is a part of my duty to look out of the oriel window
at dawn, noon, and sunset, why should I be bored with
cause, reason, and precedent for this? Let me look out
of window if it is my duty to do so; but, before and after
looking out of the window, let me enjoy my life.
RICHARD DOWLING. 883
Take the statesman. How knowledge must hamper him!
He is absolutely precluded from acting with decision by
the consciousness of the difficulties which lay in the path
of his predecessors. He has to make up his subject, to get
facts and figures from his subordinates and others. He
has to arrange the party maneuvers before he launches his
scheme, by which time all the energy is gone out of him,
and he has not half as much faith in his bill as if he had
never looked at the pros and cons. “ Never mind maneu-
vering, but go at them,” said Nelson. The moment you be-
gin to maneuver you confess your doubtfulness of success,
unless you can take your adversary at a disadvantage; but
if you fly headlong at his throat, you terrify him by the
display of your confidence and valor.
The words of Nelson apply still more closely to the gen-
eral. His knowledge that fifty years ago the British army
was worsted on this field, unnerves, paralyzes him. If he
did not know that shells are explosive and bullets deadly,
he would make his dispositions with twice the confidence,
and his temerity would fill the foe with panic. His simple
duty is to defeat the enemy, and knowing anything beyond
this only tends to distract his mind and weaken his arm.
In the middle of one of his Indian battles, and when he
thought the conflict had been decided in favor of British
arms, a messenger rode hastily up to the general in com-
mand, who was wiping his reeking forehead on his coat-
sleeve; “ A large fresh force of the enemy has appeared in
such a place; what is to be done?” Gough rubbed his
forehead with the other sleeve, and shouted out, “ Beat
’em!” Obviously no better command could have been
given. What the English nation wanted the English army
to do with the enemy was to “beat ’em.” In the pictures
of the Victoria Cross there is one of a young dandy officer
with an eyeglass in his eye and a sword in his hand,
among the thick of the foe. He knows he is in that place
to kill some one. He is quite ignorant of the fact that the
enemy is there to kill him, and he is taking his time and
looking through his eyeglass to try to find some enticing
man through whom to run his sword. One of Wellington’s
most fervent prayers was, “Oh, spare me my dandy offi-
cers!” Now dandies are never very full of knowledge, and
yet the greatest Duke thought more of them than of your
884 IRISH LITERATURE.
learning-begrimed sappers or your science-bespattered
gunners.
If an advocate at the bar knew one quarter of the law
of the land, he could never get on. In the first place, he
would know more than the judges, and this would preju-
dice the bench against him. With regard to a barrister,
the best position for him to assume, if he is addressing a
jury, is, “Gentlemen, the indisputable facts of the case,
as stated to you by the witnesses, are so-and-so. In pres-
ence of so distinguished a lawyer as occupies the bench
in this court, I do not feel myself qualified to tell you
what the law is; that will be the easy duty of his lord-
ship.” Even in Chancery cases, the barrister would best
insure success by merely citing the precedent cases, in an
offhand way, “ Does not your lordship think the case of
Burke v. Hare meets the exact conditions of the one under
consideration?” The indices are all the pleader need look
at. The judge will surely strain a point for one who does
not bore him with extracts and arguments, but leaves all
to himself, and lets the work of the court run smoothly and
just as the president wishes.
Knowledge is an absolute hindrance to the doctor of
medicine. Supposing he is a man of average intelligence
(some doctors are), he is able to diagnose, let me say,
fever. You or I could diagnose fever pretty well—quick
pulse, dry skin, thirst, and so on. But as the doctor leans
over the patient, he is paralyzed by the complication of
his knowledge. Such a theory is against feeding up, such
a theory against slops, such a theory against bleeding, such
a theory in favor of phlebotomy; there are the wet and
the dry, the hot and the cold methods; and while the doc-
tor is deliberating, vacillating, or speculating, the patient
has ample opportunity of dying, or nature of stepping in
and curing the man, and thus foiling the doctor. Is there
not much more sense and candor in the method adopted
by the Irish hunting dispensary doctor, who, before start-
ing with the hounds, locked up all drugs, except the
Glauber’s salts, a stone or two of which he left in charge
of his servant, with instructions it was to be meted out
impartially to all comers, each patient receiving an honest
fistful as a dose? It is a remarkable fact that within this
century homeopathy has gained a firm hold on an im-
RICHARD DOWLING. 885
portant section of the community, and yet, notwithstand-
ing the growth of what the allopathists or regular profes-
sion regard as ignorant quackery, the span of human life
has had six years added to it in eighty years. Still home-
opathy is a practical confession of ignorance; for it says,
in effect, “ We don’t know exactly what Nature is trying
to do, but let us give her a little help, and trust in luck.”
Whereas allopathy pretended to know everything and to
fight Nature. Here, in the result of years added to man’s
life by the development of the ignorant system, we see once
more the superiority of ignorance over knowledge.
How full of danger to the unwedded men is knowledge
owned by the widow! She has knowledge of the married
state, in which she was far removed from all the troubles
and responsibilities of life. She had her pin-money, her
bills paid, stalls taken for her at the opera, agreeable com-
pany around her board, no occasion to face money diffi-
culties. Now all that is changed. There is no elasticity
in her revenue, no margin for the gratification of her
whims; she has to pay her own bills, secure her own stalls;
she cannot very well entertain company often, and all the
unpleasantnesses of business matters press her sorely. Her
knowledge tells her that, if she could secure a second hus-
band, all would be pleasant again. It may be said that
here knowledge is in favor of the widow. Yes; but it is
against the “Community.” Remember, the “ Community ”
is always a male.
There is hardly any class or member of the community
that does not suffer drawback or injury from knowledge.
As I am giving only a crude outline of a design, I leave a
great deal to the imagination of the reader. He will easily
perceive how much happier and more free would be the
man of business, the girl, the boy, the scientist, the contro-
versialist, and, above all, the literary man, if each knew
little or nothing, instead of having pressed upon the atten-
tion from youth accumulated experiences, traditions, dis-
coveries, and reasonings of many centuries.
To the “ Delights of Ignorance,” I should devote the con-
sideration of man devoid of knowledge under various cir-
cumstances and in various positions.
By the sea who does not love to lie “ propt on beds of
amaranth and moly, how sweet (while warm airs lull,
886 IRISH LITERATURE.
blowing lowly), with half-dropt eyelids still, beneath a
heaven dark and holy, to watch the long bright river draw-
ing slowly his waters from the purple hill—to hear the
dewy echoes calling from cave to cave through the thick-
twined vine—to watch the emerald-colored waters falling
through many a woven acanthus wreath divine! Only to
see and hear the far-off sparkling brine, only to hear were
sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.” Just so! Is not
that much better than bothering about gravitation and
that wretched old clinker the moon, and the tides, and how
sea-water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen and chloride
of sodium and bromide of something else, and fifty other
things not one of which has a tolerable smell when you
meet it in a laboratory? Isn’t it better than thinking of
the number of lighthouses built on the coast of Albion,
and the tonnage which yearly is reported and cleared at
the custom-houses of London, Liverpool, and that prosper-
ous seaport of Bohemia! Isn’t it much better than im-
proving the occasion by reading a hand-book on hydraulics
or hydrostatics? Who on the seashore wants to know any-
thing? There will always, down to the last syllable of
recorded time, be finer things unknown about the sea than
can be said about all other matters in the world. Trying
to know anything about the sea is like shooting into the
air an arrow attached to a pennyworth of string with a
view to sounding space. If we threw all the knowledge
we have into the ocean the Admiralty standards of high-
water mark would not have to be altered one-millionth
part of a line.
What a blessing ignorance would be in an inn! Who
would not dispense with a knowledge of all the miseries
that follow in the wake of the vat when one is thirsty,
and has before him amber sunset-colored ale, and in his
hand a capacious, long, cool-meaning churchwarden? Who
would at such a moment cumber his mind with the unit of
specific gravity used by excisemen in testing beer? Who
would at such a moment care to calculate the toll exacted
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer before each cool gulp
may thrill with amazing joy the parched gullet?
Who, when upon a journey, would care to know the pre-
cise pressure required to blow the boiler of the engine to
Pieces, or the number of people killed in collisions during
RICHARD DOWLING. 887
the corresponding quarter of last year? Should we not be
better in sickness for not knowing the exact percentage of
deaths in cases of our class? In adversity should we not
be infinitely happier were we in ignorance of the chance
we ran of gaining a good position or of cutting our
throats? Should we not enjoy our prosperity all the more
if we were not, morning and evening, exercised by the fluc-
tuations of the share-list, fluctuations in all likelihood
destined never to increase or diminish our fortunes one
penny? And oh, for ignorance in sleep! For sleep with-
out dream, or nightmare, or memory! For sleep such as
falls upon the body when the soul is done with it and
away!
ON DUBLIN CASTLE.
From ‘Zozimus.’
Dublin Castle is in the city of Dublin, and stands on the
south side of the River Liffey. ‘It is called a castle because
it has a great many windows and a portico to the principal
entrance. It you weren’t told it was Dublin Castle you
wouldn’t think it was Dublin Castle at all. When I saw it
first I took it for a militia-barrack or a poorhouse for
gaugers. When a man showed me where the Lord Lieu-
tenant lived when he’s at home I began to think that all
Lord Lieutenants must be very low-sized men, not in the
least particular about their lodgings. The Castle, as it is
generally called, is built on Cork-hill. Many ignorant peo-
ple, such as members of Parliament and lords, think that
Cork-hill is in the city of that name. Those who have
learned geography and the use of the globes know that
Cork-hill has for many centuries been in the city of Dub-
lin. The Castle surrounds a square called the Upper
Castle Yard, in the center of which there is a beautiful
tub for holding flags. There is also a policeman in the
Upper Castle Yard, but he is not worth looking at, al-
though his face is generally clean, and he wears a silver
Albert chain. There are soldiers walking up and down at
the gate to keep themselves warm. They always carry
their guns, because, if they put them out of their hands,
888 IRISH LITERATURE.
Fenians or newspaper boys or the policemen might run
away with them. This makes the soldiers short-tempered
and chew tobacco. There is a statue of Justice over the
gateway. This statue fell out of the sky during a thunder
storm, to where it stands, and only that it is red hot the
Government would get men to take it down, for it has no
business there, and looking at it only makes the people
who live in the Castle uncomfortable.
You can go from the Upper Castle Yard to the Lower
Castle Yard under an arched gateway. There are police-
men in the Lower Yard, but they don’t wear Albert chains
or pare their nails. The Lower Castle Yard is not a yard
in the least, but makes me always think of a street with a
broken back. There are a few towers in it. These towers
are very strong. A man once told me that if you fired a
horse-pistol at one of them all day you would not be able to
make a hole in it! A great number of small boys play
marbles and ball here. The Lord Lieutenant loves to see
innocent children amusing themselves, and he often sends
them out presents of nuts and clay pipes to blow soap-bub-
bles. When there isn’t a cattle show, or a militia regiment
to be inspected, or a knight to be made, he himself often
comes out in disguise and blows soap-bubbles. It is always
remarked that the Lord Lieutenant’s soap-bubbles are the
largest and of the most beautiful colors. A man once told
me that it is because the Lord Lieutenant puts a great deal
of soft soap into the water which he uses.
There is nothing connected with the Castle about which
there are so many wrong notions as about the Castle Hack.
Some are under the belief that it is a man; others think it
to be an attorney; and there are those who go so far as to
assert that it is a member of Parliament. Of all the peo-
ple who indulge in such extravagances, I venture to say,
not one has seen, or even had the curiosity to inquire par-
ticularly about it. Now, I have seen the Hack, and learned
all that is to be known concerning it, and am, therefore,
well qualified to give correct information and a faithful
description of it. I gave a decent man at the Castle half-a-
crown, and he showed it to me and supplied me with all the
particulars I needed. The Castle Hack is a poor, lean,
wretched old horse. He is spavined and broken-winded,
and his bones are sharply visible through his faded and
RICHARD DOWLING. 889
withered hide. He is wholly unequal to the performance
of any honest work in the fields, and he is one of the mean-
est and most wretched objects which can offend the sight
of a humane and worthy man. Of all the noble attributes
possessed by his species, none remain to him; and of all
the useful qualities of his fellows, he retains but one, that
of abject servility to the rein, for he has neither the gen-
erosity nor the pride, the strength nor the swiftness, which
makes his race fit to be the companions of men. There is
ever in his eye the expression of hunger for the corn-bins
of the Castle, and dread lest he should be worried to death
by those of his own race, in their rage at seeing so obscene
. a creature wearing and dishonoring their form. His em-
ployment is in keeping with his appearance. It is he
who fetches meat for the Castle kennel, and brings the
soiled linen of the Castle to the laundry to be cleaned. Al-
though he is docile to his driver, he is spurned and de-
spised. It is not his to swell the pageant, but to feed
darkly at the Castle manger, to fear the light, and to
crawl and shudder in the noisome ways. Poor brute, if
he could only have one month’s grazing on a hill-side in
the sunlight he might pluck up some spirit, and lose at
once his taste for Castle oats, and his indifference to the
nature of the work which he performed.
The oldest part of the Castle now standing is the Back
Stairs. The entrance to this celebrated staircase is in the
Castle Garden. After going up a few steps a passage is
reached which leads by a kind of bridge, over the Lower
Castle Yard, into the Castle. The steps of the stairs are
iron; for so many people go up and down that if they were
made of any softer substance they would have been worn
away long ago. The people who go up this stairs carry
bags full of things and wear their hats very low over their
faces. They generally have turnips, and gum-arabic, and
steel pens, and penny packages of stationery in their bags.
A man once told me that they sometimes bring the heads
of people and sell them at the Castle; he also said that they
often sell their country. Who could believe this? I had
heard so many stories about this Back Stairs that I made
up my mind to go and see it for myself. Before setting out
I resolved to humor the people in the Castle, whatever
they might say to me. I got a bag, filled it with artichokes,
890 IRISH LITERATURE.
and, having pulled my hat low over my eyes, went up.
When I got to the top I met a man who asked me “if I
came about that affair.” 1 said, “ Yes,” and he led me
into a small room, where another man was eating the end
of a large quill, and reading a large blue paper with
writing on it, and having a large stamp in the corner. I
sat down. “Did you come about that affair?” said he.
“Yes,” I answered. “ Well,” said he, “did you see him?”
“I did,” I answered. “ What did he say?” he asked. “I
don’t know,” said I, feeling just as if he would order me to
be shot on the spot. “Good,” he said; “I see you have
been reading the Tichborne case and have learned caution
from it. What have you in the bag?” “ Artichokes.”
“How many?” “Twenty-five.” “ Were there really so
many?” “Yes.” “And ‘choke him’ were the words?
Were they?” “Yes.” “On the night of the 15th?”
“Yes.” “How much do you want for the artichokes?”
“One hundred pounds.” “Say two.” “Two.” “Gold or
notes?” “Gold.” “Very good! There you are,” said he,
handing me two small bags of sovereigns; “ your informa-
tion is most important. I shall forward it to the chief
to-night. Good afternoon.” And off I went with my two
hundred sovereigns.
The Castle is the best place in the world for selling arti-
chokes and lies. I would go with another bag of each now
only the artichokes are out of season. Can you understand
what information I gave?—I can’t. I hope it wasn’t
against a Royal Residence or asphalting the streets of the
city.
EDMUND DOWNEY.
(1856 —)
EDMUND Downey, the ‘‘ author-publisher,” was born in Waterford
in 1856, and is the son of a shipowner and broker. He was educated
atthe Catholic University School and St. John’s College in that city.
He went to London in 1878, and was for a time in the office of Tins-
ley, the publisher. He afterward became a partner in the firm of
Ward & Downey, from which he retired in 1890, and in 1894 he
established the publishing business of Downey & Co.
He is the author of the well-known stories signed ‘‘ F. M. Allen,”
‘Through Green Glasses,’ etc. These humorous Irish stories are
perhaps the better known, but they are hardly superior to his sea-
stories. ‘Anchor-Watch Yarns’ and kindred tales by Mr. Downey
place him in the front rank of writers of sea-stories. His ‘ Mer-
chant of Killogue’ isin more serious vein. It isa patiently wrought-
out picture of a big central figure and of the surrounding life of an
Irish country town. Among his other books are ‘Green as Grass,’
1892 ; ‘Round Tower of Babel,’ 1892; ‘The Land Smeller,’ 1893;
‘Ballybeg Junction,’ 1894; ‘Little Green Man,’ 1895; ‘ Pinches of
Salt,’ 1895; ‘The Ugly Man,’ 1896.
FROM PORTLAW TO PARADISE.
Wance upon a time, an’ a very good time it was too,
there was a dacent little man, named Paddy Power, that
lived in the parish of Portlaw.
At the time I spayke of, an’ indeed for a long spell before
it, most of Paddy’s neighbors had wandhered from the
thrue fold, an’ the sheep that didn’t stray wor, not to put
too fine a point on it, a black lot. But Paddy had always
conthrived to keep his last end in view, an’ he stuck to the
ould faith like a poor man’s plasther.
Well, in the coorse of time poor Paddy felt his days wor
well-nigh numbered, so he tuk to the bed an’ sent for the
priest; an’ thin he settled himself down to aise his con-
science an’ to clear the road in the other world by manes
of a good confession.
He reeled off his sins, mortial an’ vanyial, to the priest
by the yard, an’ begor he felt mighty sorrowful intirely
whin he thought what a bad boy he ’d been, an’ what a hape
of quare things he’d done in his time—though, as I’ve
said before, he was a dacent little man in his way, only,
you see, bein’ so close to the other side of Jordan, he tuk
891
892 IRISH LITERATURE.
an onaisy view of all his sayin’s and doin’s. Poor Paddy—
small blame to him—was very aiger to get a comfortable
corner in glory in his ould age, for he’d a hard sthruggle
enough of it here below.
Well, whin he’d towld all his sins to Father McGrath,
an’ whin Father McGrath had given him a few hard rubs
by way of consolation, he bent his head to get the absolu-
tion, an’ lo an’ behold you! before the priest could get
through the words that would open the gates of glory to
* poor Paddy, the life wint out of the man’s body.
It seems ’t was a busy mornin’ in heaven, an’ as soon a8
Father McGrath began to say the first words of the abso-
lution, down they claps Paddy Power’s name on the due-
book. However, we’ll come to that part of the story
by-an’-by.
Anyhow, up goes Paddy, an’ before be knew where he
was he found himself standin’ outside the gates of Para-
dise. Of coorse, he partly guessed there "ud be throuble,
but he thought he ’d put a bowld face on, so he gives a hard
double-knock at the door, an’ a holy saint shoves back the
slide an’ looks out at him through an iron gratin’.
“God save all here!” says Paddy.
“ God save you kindly!” says the saint.
“Maybe I’m too airly?” says Paddy, dhreadin’ all the
time that ’t is the cowld showlder he ’d get.
“?T is naither airly nor late here,” says the saint, “ per-
vidin’ you ’re on the way-bill. What’s yer name?” says he.
“ Paddy Power,” says the little man from Portlaw.
“There’s so many of that name due here,” says the
saint, “ that I must ax you for further particulars.”
“ You ’re quite welcome, your reverence,” says Paddy.
“ What ’s your occupation?” says the saint.
“Well,” says Paddy, “I can turn my hand to anything
in raison.”
“A kind of Jack-of-all-thrades? ” says the saint.
“Not exactly that,” says Paddy, thinkin’ the saint was
thryin’ to make fun of him. “In fact,” says he, “I’m a
general dayler.”
“ Av’ what do you generally dale in? ” axes the saint.
“ All’s fish that comes to my net,” says Paddy, thinkin’,
of coorse, ’t would put Saint Pether in good humor to be
reminded of ould times.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 893
“ An’ is it a fisherman you are, thin? ” axes the saint.
“Well, no,” says Paddy, “though I’ve done a little
huckstherin’ in fish in my time; but I was partial to scrap-
iron, as a rule.”
“To tell you the thruth,” says the saint, “I’m not over
fond of general daylin’, but of coorse my private feelin’s
don’t intherfere wud my duties here. 1’m on the gates
agen my will for the matther of that; but that’s naither
here nor there so far as yourself is consarned, Paddy,”
says he.
“Tt must be a hard dhrain on the constitution at times,”
says Paddy, “ to be on the door from mornin’ till night.”
“°T is,” says the saint, “of a busy day—but I must go
an’ have a look at the books. Paddy Power is your name?”
says he.
“Yis,” says Paddy; “an’, though ’t is meself that says
it, I’m not ashamed of it.”
“ An’ where are you from? ” axes the saint.
“From the parish of Portlaw,” says Paddy.
“I never heard tell of it,” says the saint, bitin’ his
thumb.
“Sure it couldn't be expected you would, sir,” says
Paddy, “ for it lies at the back of God-speed.”
“Well, stand there, Paddy avic,” says the holy saint,
“an'I gal have a good look at the books.”
“ God bless you!” says Paddy. “ Wan ’ud think ’t was
born in Munsther you wor, Saint Pether, you have such
an iligant accent in spaykin’.”
Faix, Paddy was beginnin’ to dhread that his name
wouldn’t be found on the books at all on account of his not
havin’ complate absolution, so he thought ’t was the best
of his play to say a soft word to the keeper of the kays.
The saint tuk a hasty glance at the enthry-book, but
whin Paddy called him Saint Pether he lifted his head an’
put his face to the wicket again, an’ there was a cunnin’
twinkle in his eye. .
“ An’ go you thinks ’t is Saint Pether I am?” says he.
“Of coorse, your reverence,” says Paddy; “an’ ’tis a
rock of sense I ’m towld you are.”
Well, wud that the saint began to laugh very hearty, an’
says he—
“Now it’s a quare thing that every wan of ye that
894 IRISH LITERATURE.
comes from below thinks Saint Pether is on the gates con-
stant. Do you raley think, Paddy,” says he, “that Saint
Pether has nothing else to do, nor no way to pass the time
except by standin’ here in the cowld from year’s end to
year’s end, openin’ the gates of Paradise? ”
“ Begor,” says Paddy, “that never sthruck me before,
sure enough. Of coorse he must have some sort of divar-
sion to pass the time. An’ might I ax your reverence,”
says he, “ what your own name is? an’ I hopes you 'l1 par-
don my ignorance.”
“Don’t mintion that,” says the saint; “but I’d rather
not tell you my name, just yet at any rate, for a raison of
my own.”
“ Plaize yourself an’ you ’ll plaize me, sir,” says Paddy.
“?T'ig a civil-spoken little man you are,” says the saint.
Findin’ the saint was such a nice agreeable man an’ such
an iligant discoorser, Paddy thought he’d venture on a
few remarks just to dodge the time until some other poor
sowl ’ud turn up an’ give him the chance to slip into Para-
dise unbeknownst—for he knew that wance he got in by
hook or by crook they could never have the heart to turn
him out of it again. So says he—
“Might I ax what Saint Pether is doin’ just now?”
“He’s at a hurlin’ match,” says the deputy.
“Oh, murdher!” says Paddy, “couldn't I get a peep
at the match while you're examinin’ the books?”
“I'm afeard not,” says the saint, shakin’ his head.
“ Besides,” says he, “ I think the fun is nearly over by this
time.”
“Is there often a hurlin’ match here?” axes Paddy.
“Wance a year,” says the saint. “You see,” says he,
pointin’ over his showldher wud his thumb, “they have
all nationalities in here, and they plays the game of aich
nation on aich pathron saint’s day, if you undherstand
me.”
“TI do,” says Paddy. “An’ sure enough ’t was Saint
Pathrick’s Day in the mornin’ whin I started from Port-
law, an’ the last thing I did—of coorse before tellin’ my -
sins—was to dhrink my Pathrick’s pot.”
“More power to you!” says the saint.
“I suppose Saint Pathrick is the umpire to-day?” says
Paddy.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 895
“No,” says the saint. “Aich of us, you see, takes our
turn at the gates on our own festival days.”
“Holy Moses!” shouts Paddy. “Thin ’tis to Saint
Pathrick himself I’ve been talkin’ all this while back. Oh,
murdher alive, did I ever think I ’d live to see this day!”
Begor, the poor angashore' of a man was fairly knocked
off his head to discover he was discoorsin’ so fameeliarly
wud the great Saint Pathrick, an’ the great saint himself
was proud to see what a dale the little man from Portlaw
thought of him; but he didn’t let on to Paddy how plaized
he was. “Ah!” says he, “sure we re all on an aiquality
here. You’ll be a great saint yourself, maybe, wan of these
days.”
“ The heavens forbid,” says Paddy. “ that I’d dhrame of
ever being on an aiquality wud your reverence! Begor,
’t is a joyful man I'd be to be allowed to spake a few words
to you wance ina blue moon. Aiquality, inagh! ”? says he.
“Sure what aiquality could there be between the great
apostle of Ould Ireland and Paddy Power, general day-
ler, from Portlaw? ”
“T wish there was more of ’em your way of thinkin’,
Paddy,” says Saint Pathrick, sighin’ deeply.
“ An’ do you mane to tell me,” puts Paddy, “that any
craythur inside there ’ud dar to put himself an an aiqual
footin’ wud yourself?”
“T do, thin,” says Saint Pathrick; “an’ worse than
that,” says he, “ there ’s some of ’em thinks ’t is very small
potatoes I am, in their own mind. I gives you me word,
Paddy, that it takes me all my time occasionally to keep
my timper wud Saint George an’ Saint Andhrew.”
“ Bad luck to ’em both!” said Paddy, intherruptin’ him.
“Whisht!” says Saint Pathrick. “I partly admires
your sintiments, but I must tell you there’s no rale ill-will
allowed inside here. You’ll feel complately changed
wance you gets at the right side of the gate.”
“The divil a change could make me keep quiet,” says
Paddy, “ if I heard the biggest saint in Paradise say a hard
word agen you, or even dar’ to put himself on a par wud
you!”
“Oh, Paddy!” says Saint Pathrick, “you mustn’t allow
your timper to get the betther of you. *T is hard, I know,
1 Angashore, pitiful figure. —$ Inagh, forsooth.
896 IRISH LITERATURE.
avic, to sthruggle at times agen your feelin’s, but the laiste
said the soonest mended.” '“
“ An’ will I meet Saint George and Saint Andhrew whin
I get inside?”
“You will,” says Saint Pathrick; “but you mustn’t dis-
ce our counthry by makin’ a row wud aither of ’em.”
“I? do my best,” says Paddy, “as ’t is yourself that
axes me. An’ is there any more of ’em that thrates you
wud contimpt? ”
“Well, not many,” says Saint Pathrick. “ An’ indeed,”
says he, “’t is only an odd day we meets at all; an’ I can
tell you I’m not a bad hand at takin’ my own part—but
there ’s wan fellow,” says he, “ that breaks my giddawn'
intirely.”
“ Av’ who is he? the bla’guard!” says Paddy.
“He's an uncanonized craychur named Brakespeare,”
says Saint Pathrick.
“ A wondher you ’d be seen talkin’ to the likes of him!”
says Paddy; “an” who is he at all?”
“Did you never hear tell of him?” says Saint Path-
rick.
“Never,” says Paddy.
“Well,” says Saint Pathrick, “he made the worst
bull——”
“Thin,” says Paddy, intherruptin’ him in hot haste,
“he’s wan of ourselves—more shame for him! Oh, wait
till I gets a grip of him by the scruff of the neck!”
“ Whisht! I tell you!” says Saint Pathrick. “ Perhaps
*t is committin’ a vaynial sin you are now, an’ if that wor
to come to Saint Pether’s ears, maybe he’d clap twinty
years of Limbo on to you—for he’s a hard man some
times, especially if he hears of any one losin’ his timper,
or getting impatient at the gates. An’ moreover,” says
Saint Pathrick, “ himself an’ this Brakespeare are as thick
as thieves, for they both sat in the same chair below. I
had a hot argument wud Nick yesterday.”
“Ould Nick, is it?” says Paddy.
“No,” says Saint Pathrick, laughin’. “Nick Brake
speare, I mane—the same indeveedual I was tellin’ you
about.”
“TI beg your reverence’s pardon,” says Paddy, “an’ I
1 Giddawn, kidney ; fig. back.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 897
hopes you ’ll excuse my ignorance. But you wor goin’ to
give me an account of this hot argument you had wud the
bla’guard whin I put in my spoke.”
Begor, Saint Pathrick dhrew in his horns thin, an’
fearin’ Paddy might think they wor in the habit of squab-
blin’ in heaven, he says, “ Of coorse, I meant only a frindly
discussion.”
paid what was the frindly discussion about?” axes
ly.
“ About this bull of his,” says Pathrick.
Pad The mischief choke himself an’ his cattle!” says
dy.
“ Begor,” says Saint Pathrick, “’t was choked the poor
man was, sure enough.”
“ More power to the man that choked him!” says Paddy.
“I hopes ye canonized him.”
“oT wasn’t a man at all,” says Saint Pathrick.
“A faymale, perhaps? ” says Paddy.
“Fie, fie, Paddy,” says Saint Pathrick. “Come, guess
in.”
“ Ah, I’m a poor hand at guessin’,” says Paddy.
“ Well, ’t was a blue-bottle,” says St. Pathrick.
“ An’ was it thryin’ to swallow the bottle an’ all he
was?” says Paddy. “He must have been ‘a hard case.”
Begor, Saint Pathrick burst out laughin’ an’: says
he, “You’ll make your mark here, Paddy, I have no
doubt.”
“I” make my mark on them that slights your rever-
ence, believe me,” says Paddy.
“Hush!” says Saint Pathrick, puttin’ his finger on
his lips an’ lookin’ very solemn an’ business-like. “Here
comes Saint Pether,” he whispers, rattlin’ the kays to show
he was mindin’ his duties. “ He looks in good-humor too;
go it’s in luck you are.”
“T hope so, at any rate,” says Paddy; “ for the clouds is
very damp, an’ I ’m throubled greatly wud the rheumatics.”
“Well, Pathrick,” says Saint Pether, comin’ up to the
gates—Paddy Power could just get a sighth of the pair
inside through the bara of the wicket—“how goes the
enemy? Have you had a hard day of it, my son?”
“A very hard mornin’,” says Saint Pathrick. “They
wor flockin’ here as thick as flies at cock-crow—I mane,”
a
898 IRISH LITERATURE.
says he, gettin’ very red in the face, for he was in dhread
he was afther puttin’ his fut in it wud Saint Pether, “I
mane just at daybreak.”
“It’s sthrange,” says Saint Pether, in a dhramey kind
of a way, “but I’ve noticed meself that there’s often a
great rush of people in the airly mornin’: often I don’t
know whether it ’s on my head or my heels I do be standin’
wud the noise they kicks up outside, elbowin’ wan another,
an’ bawlin’ at me as if it was hard of hearin’ I was.”
“ How did the match go?” says Saint Pathrick, aiger to
divart Saint Pether’s mind from his throubles.
“ Grand!” says Saint Pether, brightenin’ up. “ Hurlin’
is a great game. It takes all the stiffness out of my ould
joints. But who’s that outside? ” catchin’ sighth of Paddy
Power.
“A poor fellow from Ireland,” says Saint Pathrick.
“I dunno how we’re to find room for all these Irish-
men,” says Saint Pether, scratchin’ his head. “’T was
only last week I gev ordhers to have a new wing added to
the Irish mansion, an’ begor I’m towld to-day that ’t is
chock full already. But of coorse we must find room for
the poor sowls. Did this chap come vid Purgathory?”
say he.
“No,” says Saint Pathrick. “They sint him up direct.”
“Who is he?” says Saint Pether.
“His name is Paddy Power,” says St. Pathrick. “He
seems a dacent sort of craychur.”
“ Where ’s he from?” axes Saint Pether.
“The parish of Portlaw,” says Saint Pathrick.
“Portlaw!” says Saint Pether. “Well, that’s
sthrange,” says he, rubbin’ his chin. “You know I never
forgets a name, but to my sartin knowledge I never heard
of Portlaw before. Has he a clane record?”
“There ’s a thrifle wrong about it,” says Saint Pathrick.
“ He a down on the way-bill, but there are some charges
agen him not quite rubbed out.”
“Tn that case,” says Saint Pether, “ we ’d best be on the
safe side, an’ sind him to Limbo for a spell.”
Begor, when Paddy Power heard this he nearly lost his
seven sinses wud the fright, so he puts his face close up
to the wicket, an’ he cries out in a pitiful voice—
“O blessed Saint Pether, don’t be too hard on me. Sure
EDMUND DOWNEY. 899
even below, where the law is sthrict enough agen a poor
sthrugglin’ boy, they always allows him the benefit of the
doubt, an’ I gives you my word, yer reverence, ’t was only
by an accident the slate wasn’t rubbed clane. I know for
sartin that Father McGrath said some of the words of the
absolution before the life wint out of my body. Don’t
dhrive a helpless ould man to purgathory, I beseeches you.
Saint Pathrick will go bail for my good behavior, I'll be
bound; an’ ’tis many the prayer I said to your own self
below!”
Faix, Saint Pether was touched wud the implorin’ way
Paddy spoke, an’ turnin’ to Saint Pathrick he says, “’T is
a quare case, sure enough. I don’t know that I ever re-
mimber the like before, an’ my memory is of the best. I
think we’d do right to have a consultation over the affair
before we decides wan way or the other.”
“Ah, give the poor angashore a chance,” says Saint
Pathrick. “’T is hard to scald him for an accident. Be-
sides,” says he, brightenin’ up as a thought sthruck him,
“you say you never had a man before from the parish of
Portlaw, an’ I remimber you towld me wance that you’d
like to have a represintative here from every parish in the
world.”
“Thrue enough,” says Saint Pether; “an’ maybe 1’d
never have another chance from Portlaw.”
“ Maybe not,” says Saint Pathrick, humorin’ him.
So Saint Pether takes a piece of injy-rubber from his
waistcoat-pocket, an’ goin’ over to the enthry-book he rubs
out the charges agen Paddy Power.
“Tl take it on meself,” says he, “to docthor the books
for this wance, only don’t let the cat out of the bag on me,
Pathrick, my son.”
“Never fear,” says Saint Pathrick. “ Depind your life
on me.”
“Well, it’s done, anyhow,” says Saint Pether, puttin’
the injy-rubber back into his pocket; “ an’ if you hands me
over the kays, Pat,” says he, “ I 11 relaise you for the day,
so that you can show your frind over the grounds.”
“Tis a grand man you are!” says Saint Pathrick.
“ My blessin’ on you, avic!”
“Come in, Paddy Power,” says Saint Pether, openin’
the gate; “ an’ remimber always that you wouldn't be here
900 IRISH LITERATURE.
for maybe nine hundred an’ ninety-nine year or more only
that you ’re the only offer we ever had from the Parish of
Portlaw.”
KING JOHN AND THE MAYOR.
I suppose it’s well known that King John made two
visits to the city of Watherford. The first time he came he
was only a slip of a boy of about nineteen year, an’ his
father, who had a hard job rearin’ him (for ’tis the un-
mannerdly young cub he was) thought he’d kill two birds
wud wan stone by gettin’ rid of the prince for a short spell
in the first place, an’ by gettin’ the boy to make himself
frindly wud the Irish chiefs in the second place.
But nothin’ would suit young Masther John except di-
varsion an’ bla’guardin’. The moment he put his fut on
Irish soil he began to poke fun at the ould chieftains’
beards. ’T was jealous the young jackanapes was of the
fine hairy faces of the crowd that met him on the quay of
Watherford, for divil a hair he could grow on the upper
part of his lip, though he was near dhraggin’ the English
coort into bankruptcy wud the quantities of bears’ grease
an’ other barbers’ thricks he thried day afther day to coax
out even a few morsels of a mustache.
Anyhow he made naither a good beginnin’ nor a good
endin’ on his first thrip to Ireland. He ate so much fresh
salmon that a rash broke out on him, an’ nearly dhrove
him to despair, for he was fond of the faymales, an’ a man
wud a bad rash even if he’s a prince of the blood isn’t
the soort of craychur to make much headway wud the
girls. .
He got over the rash, however, in due coorse; an’ built
an hospital in mimory of his recovery; an’ to this day it
stands there at the fut of John’s Hill, an’ is called the
“Leper Hospital.”
As soon as he got well rid of the rash, he began to make
ructions in the counthry, kickin’ out the rale ould anshant
owners of the soil, an’ makin’ presents of what didn’t be-
long to him to his own follyers. Begor even owld Henery,
the father, got unaisy at the son’s plan of campaign, so
back he calls Prince John an’ puts a Misther Decoorcy in
his place.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 901
Well, time passed on, an’ when his call came, ould Hen-
ery the Second wint to Limbo; an’ afther a spell, the son
John got a howld of the throne. He had always a hank-
erin’ for the Watherford salmon, even afther the rash it
broke out on him, so as soon as he could make things snug
in the English coort, away he sails again for Ireland.
This time of coorse he was a full king, an’ as he was
several years ouldher, the Watherford people naturally
expected his manners would have improved; so they made
up their minds to forget the thricks an’ bla’guardin’ of the
nineteen year ould prince, an’ to give King John a hearty
welcome.
When the Mayor an’ Corporation heard the news that
the royal barge was.comin’ up the river, they put on their
grand robes and started down the quay. They wint out-
side the walls a bit until they came to a piece of slob land
near the mouth of a sthrame, an’ there they stud up to
their ankles in slush until the king’s ship hove in sighth.
Thin they waved a fiag of welcome to his Majesty, who was
standin’ on deck, an’ bawled out to him to dhrop anchor
abreast of them. So the captain—a red-whiskered Welsh-
man who chawed more tobaccy than was wholesome for
him—puts the ship’s head in for the shore, an’ dhropped
anchor as soon as he got close to the slob where the Mayor
and Corporation wor standin’.
“How are we to get ashore, boys?” says King John,
makin’ a fog-horn of his fists.
“ Aisy, avic,” says the Mayor. “It’s a sthrong ebb tide
now, an’ if you’ll go below into your cabin the ship will
dhry while your clanein’ your face an’ hands an’ fixin’ the
crown on your poll.”
“All right,” says King John. “Come aboord as soon as
the tide laives her.”
“T will,” says the Mayor.
Wud that King John went down to the cabin, an’ in
about half an hour the ship began to ground an’ very soon
afther the Mayor, not heedin’ the sighth of a fut or two
of wather between him an’ the king’s craft, made a start
to go down to her.
“ Howld on there, where ye are,” says he to the Corpora-
tion. “If ye was all to come aboord maybe ’t is heel over
902 IRISH LITERATURE.
the little vessel would, for she looks a crank piece of
goods.”
“ All right,” says the Corporation. ‘“We’ll wait here
till you return, and safe journey to your worship!”
Well, whin the Mayor got on deck of coorse his boots
were dhrippin’ wud mud an’ wather.
“Ts there a door-mat aboord?” says he to the skipper.
“ Divil a wan,” says the skipper. “Do you think ’tis
in a lady’s chamber you are?”
“ You ’re an unmannerdly lot,” says the Mayor, stampin’
on the decks an’ givin’ a kick out wud his left leg to shake
some of the wather out of his boot.
Just at that moment up comes King John from the
cabin, an’ a few spatthers of mud went into his royal eye.
Before the Mayor could open his mouth to ax pardon the
King bawls out at him, “ What the mischief do you mane,
you lubber? Will nothin’ plaize you only knockin’ the
sighth out of my eyes an’ dirtyin’ my decks wud your
muddy say-boots? ’Tis more like a mud-lark than a
Mayor you are.”
The poor Mayor very nearly lost his timper intirely at
the insultin’ words of King John, for ’t was none of his
fault that he dirtied the decks, but he managed to conthrol
himself, an’ says he, “I ax your majesty’s pardon for
bringing the mud aboord, but might I make so bowld as to
inquire how I could be expected to have clane boots afther
thrampin’ through the slush out there? An’ as for knockin’
the sight out of your eyes,” says he, “I give you me word I
never seen you comin’ up the cabin stairs or I wouldn’t
have lashed out wud my leg.”
“Give me none of your lip,” says the King. “I'd cut
your ugly sconce off if I thought there was a thought of
thraison in your mind.”
“Thraison!” says the Mayor, mighty indignant, for
*tis a proud soort of a man he was in his way. “I don’t
know the maynin’ of the word.”
“J’ll.soon tache you the maynin’ of it, you spalpeen,”
says the King; “ an’ if you don’t go down on your bended
knees an’ beg my pardon this minute, an’ give me your
note of hand for five hundred pound I’ll dhraw your
teeth first for you, an’ thin I Il thry you for thraison, wud
EDMUND DOWNEY. 908
meself for judge and jury, as soon as I sets fut in the
city.”
The mischief only knows what would have happened
thin only for a chum of the King’s who came up from the
cabin at that minute.
“Your Majesty,” says the young lord, “I think, with
all due respects to you, you’re too hard agen the Mayor.
Sure the poor man did his best. He came aboord at the
‘risk of gettin’ a heavy cowld in his head, in ordher to
give you an airly welcome, an’ how could he mane thraison
when he ran such a risk to sarve you?”
“Maybe you’re right,” says King John, who owed the
young lord a big lump of money and was partial to him
for other raisons too. “Maybe you’re right; an’ I know,”
says he, “ that my timper is none of the best; and moreover
the say-sickness isn’t out of my stomach yet, bad luck to
it! All right,” says he, turnin’ to the Mayor, an’ spittin’
on his fist. “Put it there,” says King John, howldin’ out
his hand.
So the Mayor spit in his own fist, an’ the pair shuk
hands quite cordial.
All would have gone well then but for the iligant
beard an’ whiskers the Mayor wore. The sighth of them
fairly tormented King John, an’ the bla’guard broke out
in him again as he looked at his worship an’ saw him
sthrokin’ the fine silky hairs which (savin’ your presence)
nearly shut out the view of the honest man’s stomach.
“IN take me oath ’tis a wig,” says the King to him-
self; “an’ faith if the wig isn’t stuck mighty fast to his
chin the tug I'll give it will soon laive it in fragments on
the deck.”
So the King goes over to the Mayor an’ purtended to be
admirin’ the beautiful goold chain his worship carried
round his neck, an’ while a cat would be lickin’ her ear he
gives the beard such an onmerciful dhrag that he tore a
fistful of it clane out of the dacent man’s chin.
The Mayor set up a screech—an’ small blame to him—
that you’d hear from this to Mullinavat, an’ begor the
crowd ashore thought ’t was hein’ murdhered he was; so
King John, fearin’ the Corporation might thry to sink him-
self an’ the ship if they knew he was afther damagin’ their
mayor, thought 't was the best of his play to knuckle
904 IRISH LITERATURE.
undher at wance. He begs the Mayor’s pardon in a mortial
funk, an’ says he to him, “ We’d best be gettin’ ashore im-
majertly the both of us.”
The poor Mayor of coorse couldn’t afford to show timper
agen a king, so brushin’ the scaldin’ tears off his cheek he
made up his mind to pocket his pride; but at the same time
says he to himself, “Il tache this unmannerdly cub a
lesson before he’s many hours ouldher.”
“ All right, your majesty,” says he, aloud, to the King,
“T quite agrees wud you that ’tis betther the pair of us
should go ashore at wance; but come here,” says he, takin’
King John to the bulwarks of the ship an’ pointin’ over
the side. “Now I ax you,” says he, “how are you to get
ashore wud at laiste a fut of wather inside the little vessel
still, an’ fifty yards, more or less, of dirty soft mud fore-
nenst you?”
Begor, the King seemed puzzled at this; but he knew
there was no time to be lost, for the crowd ashore was be-
ginnin’ to grow bigger, and it was aisy to see that throuble
was brewin’, for a few of the quay boys were peltin’ an
odd pavin’-stone at the ship. “I lave it to you, Misther
Mayor,” says he; “but whatever you do, don’t keep me
standin’ here in the cowld, for I have a wake chest, an’ my
inside is complately out of ordher afther the voyage.”
“Begor!” says the Mayor, dodgin’ a box of a pavin
stone that came aboord that minute, “I dunno what’s
best to be done. You’d get your death if you wor to
thramp it ashore in them patent leather boots of yours.
I'll tell you what I 11 propose,” says he.
“That ’s what I’m waitin’ for you to do,” says the King,
intherruptin’ him; “an’ if you don’t be quick about it,
maybe ’t is hit wud a stone III be, an’ in that case,” says
he, “’t will be me duty as a king to bombard the city wud
cannon-balls. D’ ye mind me now?” says he, beginnin’ to
show timper agen.
“J do,” says the Mayor. “Sure, if you didn’t take the
words out of my mouth, I was goin’ to say that I’d carry
you safe ashore on my own two showldhers.”
“Very well,” says King John; “but if you wish for
paice an’ quietness you 'd betther stir your stumps quick,
for I tell you I won’t stand here to be made a cockshot of
by these Watherford bla’guards.”
EDMUND DOWNEY. 905
“Come on, thin,” says the Mayor.
So wud that the sailors fixed what they calls a cradle, an”
a few frinds of the King lifted him up on the showlders of
the Mayor, an’ down the pair wor lowered into the little
wash of wather inside the ship.
“ Howlé a tight grip of me now,” says the Mayor, makin’
a start; “for ’t is an onsartin sort of a journey. There’s
a dale of shiftin’ sands about here, an’ if I wor to make a
false step or lose my bearin’s, maybe they ’d never hear of
your majesty again in England; p’raps ’t is swallowed up
in the mud the pair of us ’ud be, an’ I have a heavy family
dependin’ on me.”
“111 keep a sturdy grip,” says the King; “ an” for your
own sake, an’ the sake of your heavy family, I’d recom-
mend you to pick your steps as if ’t was threadin’ on eggs
you wor.”
“ Never fear,” says the mayor. “ Is the crown fixed firm
on your head?” .
“oT is,” says King John.
“The raison I axed you,” says the Mayor, “is that I
thought ’t was a thrifle too big for you. I noticed it wob-
blin’ about on your head afther you came up from the
cabin.”
“ Well, to tell you the thruth, an’ ’t isn’t often I do the
like,” says the King, “1 didn’t laive my measure for that
crown; but I’ve rowled a sthrip of newspaper inside the
rim of it, an’ it doesn’t fit at all bad now,” says he, shakin’
his head, an’ fixin’ an eye-glass into his eye.
“Did you buy it ready-made? pardon me for axin’,” says
the Mayor.
“No,” says King John; “but it belonged to my big
brother, Richard.”
“T’ve heard tell of him,” says the Mayor. “The ‘Lion
Heart’ they called him, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” says King John; “but between yerself and
meself ”—for he was mighty jealous of his brother, an’
indeed, he hadn't a good word to throw to a dog—“ ’t was
a ‘thrick’ lion he tore the heart out of.”
“1s that so? ” says the Mayor.
“oT ig,” says King John. “ You see,” says he, “ himself
an’ Blondin wor great chums intirely, an’ Blondin bein’ a
€ircus man—”
906 IRISH LITERATURE.
“I know,” intherrupted the Mayor. “He crossed over
the Falls of Niagry on a rope, didn’t he?”
“He did,” says King John. “’T is round his neck I'd
like to have had the rope, for ’t is an onaisey time of it he
gave meself be rescuin’ my brother. I made sure they’d
cooked his goose in that Austrian castle, but nothin’ would
suit his chum Blondin, if you plaize, except whistlin’ some
of his ould circus tunes outside the walls, until the King
of Austria let him in. Well, Blondin brought in a thrick
lion wud him that he used to be showin’ off at the fairs.
‘Look here,’ says he to the King of Austria, ‘that man
You re keepin’ down in the cellar is a match for a lion.’
‘ Prove it,’ says the King of Austria. ‘I will,’ says Blon-
din. ‘Well, take the muzzle off yer baste,’ says the King
of Austria, ‘an’ let the pair of ’em have a fair stand-up
fight; an’ if King Richard bates the lion Ill give him his
liberty.’ ‘Done!’ says Blondin; so wud that he brings
the lion down into the cellar, an’ of coorse my brother
knew ’t was only an ould painted jackass without a tooth
in his head, so he makes wan grab at the unfortunate ani-
mal an’ tore the heart clane out of him.”
“Oh, murdher!” says the Mayor. “An’ that’s why
they call him the ‘ Lion Heart,’ is it?”
“Tt is,” says King John.
“ An’ what’s that they calls yerself?” says the Mayor,
who kner- well that King John didn’t like to be reminded
of the nickname he was known undher in the English
Coorts, an’ wanted to take a rise out of him on the quiet.
“T ll tell you what, my bucko,” says King John, for he
felt the Mayor all of a thremble undher him, an’ he knew
it was smotherin’ a laugh in his sleeve he was, “ I 11 tell
you what, my bucko,” says he, “you'd betther give me
none of your sauce. Only for the onnathural way I’m
placed now, perched up here like a canary-bird, I’d soon
let you know who.you wor thryin’ to poke your fun at.
D’ ye mind me now?”
“ Begonnies!” says the Mayor, “’t is no fun, I can tell
you, to be endeavorin’ to get safe ashore wud such a pre-
cious load on me showlders. If yer Majesty thinks ’t is
for a lark I’m carryin’ you, let me tell you that you ’re
intirely mistaken. Oh murdher!” says he, dhroppin’ on
wan knee, “ but ’t is into a boghole we are!”
EDMUND DOWNEY. 907
Of coorse he knew there wasn’t a boghole wudin a mile
of him, but he wanted to divart the King’s mind from
what he was afther sayin’ about his nickname, for ’t is in
dhread he was that maybe he was carryin’ the joke too far.
“ Boghole!” bawls the King, nearly jumpin’ out of his
skin wud the fright. “Let me down, you scoundhrel,”
says he. “ I see now that ’t is a thraisonable plot you have
agen me afther all. I wondhered why it was you worn’t
makin’ a sthraight coorse for the firm shore.”
An’ sure enough the Mayor had gone a dale out of his
road just in ordher to have a rise out of King John, to pay
him off for havin’ given his beard the tug.
The pair of ’em wor now standin’ close to the mouth of
the Pill, an’ the mud all round was as soft as butthermilk,
an’ the poor Mayor was more than half-way up to his
knees in it; but he knew every inch of the ground, an’
wasn’t in the laiste danger of dhread of himself. Of coorse,
if King John fell from his showlders there "ud be an end
of him, for he’d rowl down into the wathers of the Pill
before the Mayor could have time to get a grip of him.
“Go straight for the shore this minute, I command you,”
says the King.
The Mayor saw that his Majesty was in a fair rage, so
he made up his mind not to play any more thricks on him
but to make a short cut through the mud to the Corpora-
tion. :
“ Howld your grip now,” says he, givin’ the King a sud-
den hoist to straighten him on his back; an’ before the
words wor well out of his mouth off tumbles King John’s
crown an’ down it rowls into the Pill.
“Oh murdher!” says the mayor, forgettin’ himself com-
plately, an’ going to dhrop the King into the mud. “ ”T ig
lost the crown is! There’s twenty fut of wather there if
there ’s an inch, an’ there isn’t a diver on the face of the
earth would take a headher into it, the wathers are that
filthy!”
“ What are you doin’, you ruffian?” screams the King,
catchin’ a grip of the Mayor’s whisker wud wan hand an’
of the goold chain wud the other. “ Dhrop me at the peril
of your life, you onnathural monsther,” says he.
“ An’ what about the crown?” says the Mayor, thryin’
to take the King’s fist out of his whiskers.
908 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Let it go to Jericho!” says King John.
“oT wouldn't be the first time ’t was there, anyhow,”
says the Mayor, who was fond of his joke.
“OT is a quare man you are,” says King John, thryin’ to
smother a laugh ; “ but go on, you bla’guard,” says he, “ an’
put me on dhry land at wance, an’ no more of your thricks.”
“ Never fear!” says the Mayor; “ an’ I hopes we’re none
the worst frinds afther all ’s said an’ done.”
“None the worse,” says King John, “only we’ll be
betther frinds as soon as you land me in a hard spot.”
So the Mayor put his best fut forward an’ in a few min-
utes himself an’ the King were shakin’ hands wud the Cor-
poration.
“You ’ll catch your death of cowld,” says the Mayor to
King John, “if you stand there much longer wudout your
crown. Have you any objection,” says he, “to wearin’ my
hat for a spell until they have time to forge a new figure-
head for you?”
“Not the laiste objection in life,” says King John, fixin’
the Mayor’s hat on his head. “ But ’t is dhry work, shakin’
hands, boys,” says he, addhressin’ the crowd assembled on
the quay; “so the sooner we shapes our coorse for the near-
est shebeen the betther I ’ll like it, at any rate.”
“Bravo!” says the Corporation, startin’ a procession
wud King John at the head of ’em an’ a fife an’ dhrum band
from Ballybricken follyin’ up in the rear.
Well, to cut a long story short, King John whin he was
laivin’ Watherford made a present of his borrowed caubeen
to the Corporation; an’ if you doubts my word you can
go down to the Town Hall any day an’ ax to see King
John’s hat, an’ the Mayor’s secrethary will show you the
self-same wan that King John got the loan of from the
ould anshent Mayor—an’ a very dilapidated speciment
of head gear it is too.
That ’s the true ‘story of how King John lost his crown
in the wash of the Pill, as the little sthrame is called; an’
sure ’t is known as John’s Pill to this day.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 909
BALEIGH IN MUNSTER.
Many generations ago there appeared at the English
Coort a young fellow by the name of Walther Rolly. He
was a darin’ soger an’ a darin’ navigathor, but wud all his
navigatin’ an’ sogerin’ he could never keep his mind off
the money. Day an’ night he was always dhramein’ of
goold; an’ nothing was too hot or too heavy for him so
long as there was goold at the bottom of the job. Wan
minute he’d go an’ discover a new counthry out in the
bowels of the unknown says, an’ another minute he 'd start
an’ knock the daylights out of the French army or the
Spanish Armady. O! he was a darin’ man altogether an’
no mistake; but the money, as I’ve towld you, was always
in his mind.
Of coorse he didn’t do his thravelin’ an’ sogerin’ for
nothing, but he found ’t wasn’t aisy at all to make a big
fortune, the Coort had so many pickin’s out of everything.
Aich an’ every man in the Coort was bustin’ wud jealousy
of young Walther, an’ of coorse they all used their enday-
vors to cut Rolly’s share down to the lowest penny whin-
ever he brought a cargo of diamonds into port, or nabbed
a threasure-ship from the King of Spain.
Well, wan day Rolly was walkin’ along the sthreets of
London, turnin’ over some new plan for shovelin’ in the
coin, whin what does he see but Eleezabeth, the Queen of
all England, pickin’ her steps across the road!
°T was a muddy day, an’ crossin’-sweepers, I’m towld,
worn’t invinted in that time, so Rolly, seein’ her Majesty’s
shoes wor rather slendher in the soles, an’ that the mud
was stickin’ to em like wax, rushes over to her, whips off
his cloak, an’ axes her to make a door-mat of it. Eleeza-
beth just looked at him for wan minute, an’ sure enough
she recognized him. .
“ Rolly!” says she, wipin’ her boots on the cloak.
“The same, your Majesty, at your sarvice,” says he,
kneelin’ down on wan knee as if to pick up his cloak, but
ralely wud the intintion of remindin’ Eleezabeth that now
was her chance to make a knight of him aisy.
Her Majesty looks at him out undher the corners of her
eyes, an’ it sthruck her more than ever what a handsome
young chap this Rolly was, an’ begor, says she to herself,
910 IRISH LITERATURE.
“he seems a rale Coort gintleman, an’ maybe I’m doin’
wrong in bein’ so bitther agen the men”—for you must
know Queen Eleezabeth was teetotally opposed to mathri-
mony. All the single kings in Europe, an’ all the princes
an’ lords at her own Coort ’ud be only too aiger to lade
her to the althar, but she wouldn’t look at wan of ’em at
any price. However, this young Rolly tuk her fancy all of
a suddint, an’ she ups wud her umbrella an’ there an’ then
- she hits him a whack of it on the showldher, an’ says she,
“Rise up, Sir Walther Rolly—an’ call a covered car for
me!”
So Rolly did as he was towld an’ he didn’t forget to pick
up his cloak aither. “Send that to the wash,” says Queen
Eleezabeth ; “ an’ I'll see that you gets a new cloak out of
the royal wardrobe, for ’t was a very gintlemanly act to
spread it undher the soles of my feet.”
“All right, your Majesty,” says Rolly, openin’ the door
of the covered car, an’ helpin’ her into it.
“Come up to the Coort,” says she, “afther taytime, an’
I'll have a talk wud you about a job that I think ’ud suit
you complately.”
“T will,” says Rolly, “ wud the greatest of pleasure; an’
?t is much obliged to you I am for makin’ a knight of me.”
“Don’t mintion it,” says she. An’ then the car druv off
towards the Palace.
The same evenin’ Rolly dhresses himself in his Sunday
clothes, an’ fixes rings all over his fingers, an’ puts into
his scarf a beautiful new pin he ’d snatched out of a Span-
ish prince’s shirt, an’ afther oilin’ his hair, and spillin’ a
dhrop of scent on his han’kerchief, he starts off for the
Palace an’ was shown up to the Queen’s apartments.
“Well, Sir Walther,” says Queen Eleezabeth, “I’ve
been makin’ enquiries about you, an’ I’m towld you ”re on
the look-out for a job. Is that so?”
“It is,” says he.
“ What sort of a job "ud you like? ” says she.
“ Anything that’ll pay,” says he.
“Did you ever hear tell of Ireland in your thravels?” -
axes the Queen.
“I did, thin; but at the present moment I couldn't give
you the bearin’s of it, though if you axed where any part
EDMUND DOWNEY. 911
of Afrikay or Amerikay was, I could tell you right off the
exact lie of it by the compass.”
“ Sthrange,” says she, “ you never ventured to Ireland!”
“T’m towld there ’s no money there,” says he.
“Well, there isn’t many goold mines in it,” says the
Queen, wud a laugh; “ for we ’ve been squeezin’ ’em purty
dhry since my ancesthor, ould Henery the Second, grabbed
the counthry. But wud all that,” says she, “there’s
dodges of makin’ money there if you only goes the right
way about it.”
“T hear ’t is an onsettled sort of a place,” says Rolly.
“°T is,” says the Queen; “ an’ that’s what I’m dhrivin’
at just now. You’re not particular what you do?” says
she.
“No, thin,” says he. “I’m a purty hard case by this,
an’ if it’s murdher you mane, I’m the boy for flourishin’
the swoord.”
“Well,” says the Queen, “I didn’t exactly mane that
whin I axed you the questhion. Are you too proud to go
into thrade! ”
“Deed, thin, I’m not,” says Rolly; “an’ if it’s the
bacon thrade you mane,” says he, “ which I’ve heard tell
is the main stay of Ireland, I’m not at all averse to goin’
into the pig line, on a royal license.”
“No,” says the Queen. “That’s too paceful a thrade
for me.”
“ An’ what is it you re dhrivin’ at?” axes Rolly, seein’
that her Majesty was seemin’ly afeard to come out straight
off wud her plan. “I towld you nothing was out of my
line so long as I could see money at the end of it.”
“Very well,” says the Queen. “Ill put my plans before
you. I’m advised that very little ’ud rise a rebellion agen
me in Munsther, so if you likes to go over an’ stir up the
craychurs there, you’d have no throuble in slaughtherin’
?em.”?
“ An’ I suppose,” says Rolly, intherruptin’ her Majesty,
“you ’d give me so much a head for the job—but where
does the thrade come in?”
“ You ’re runnin’ away wud the story,” says she. “You
see this is how it is. I’ve lately come to the conclusion
that it’s dangerous to go on slaughtherin’ the Irish wud-
out buryin’ ’em aftherwards. A pestilence is like enough
912 . IRISH LITERATURE.
to break out, an’ maybe a strong westherly win’ ’ud carry
that same over into this counthry; so my idaya is to put
all the corpses into coffins, an’ bury ’em dacently. Now
this is what I’m goin’ to offer you, so pay attention,
Rolly,” says the Queen.
“I'm doin’ that,” says he, dhrawin’ his eyebrows very
hard together.
“ Go over to Munsther,” says she, “an’ I'll make you
a prisent of forty thousand acres of land.”
“ What ’s on the land? ” axes Rolly.
“Tember,” says she. “Fine hardy threes, I’m towld.
Now if you starts the Irish into a lively rebellion in your
disthrict, you can set up a facthory an’ do the undhertakin’
wholesale, for I wouldn’t ax a knight to do it by retail.”
“T see,” says he, grinnin’, “ A nod is as good as a wink
to a blind horse, ma’am. An’ so it’s an undhertaker you
wants to make of me?”
“Tt is,” says she: “a Gentleman-Undhertaker.”
“ An’ how much will you allow me? ” axes Rolly.
“Two pound a coffin,” says she; “ an’ the bigger the bill
ig, the betther I'll like it.”
“When ’ll I start? ” says he.
“ As soon as I can get the ordher made out for the forty
thousand acres,” answers the Queen.
“You ’re sure there’s plenty of tember on the estate?”
says he.
“Sartin,” says she. “I can show you the survey of it
before you signs the conthract wud me.”
“TP wouldn't pay, you know,” says he, “if the wood
wasn’t handy.”
“I know that,” says she. “And now I’ll be dismissin’
you, for it’s growin’ late, an’ I have a character to lose.”
“T hope you ’ll never lose it on my account,” says Rolly,
who had a nate way of turnin’ his words. An’ wud that he
makes a low bow an’ walks out of the room as graceful as
a dancin’-masther.
The next day, afther signin’ his conthract an’ gettin’
the ordher for the forty thousand acres of land, off starts
Sir Walther for Ireland wud a hundred sogers to help him
out in the job he had in hand. He landed afther a good
yovage in the harbor of Cork, an’ at wance he put matthers
in thrain.
EDMUND DOWNEY. 913
Afther buildin’ a bit of a fort as a kind of a back-door
to the ocean, he tuk a jauntin’ car an’ thraveled down to
Youghal, where he thought he ’d make his headquarters an’
start the facthory. He had some throuble in the beginnin’
findin’ journeymen undhertakers, but of coorse he spun
a yarn to ’em about the good he’d do the counthry by in-
throducin’ home-manufacture; an’ at last he got a suffi-
cient number of hands together, an’ thin the work began in
airnest. He felled the threes in all directions, an’ he got
up a saw-mill; an’ soon Rolly had the whole town of
Youghal busy, wan way or another, at the coffin thrade.
Whin all was in full swing he dhrives back to his fort,
an’ gives his insthructions to his men.
“I’m goin’,” says he, “to take command of all the
throops in Cork barracks, an’ as soon as they ’re ready,
then I'll order ’em out of the city an’ get ’em to scour the
Province of Munsther clane. There’s a dale of varmint in
the shape of natives gothered together in parts of the
counthry, an’ we ’ll massacray ’em so far as we can. Now
to all ye that I brought wud me I have this advice to give:
don’t put yerselves into danger. Let the other throops
have the first go-in at the inemy, an’ when they 're done
wud ’em, let ye finish ’em off complately, for of coorse
there ’ll be a dale of ’em only half kilt. Were partly on a
paceful mission here, an’ thrade is what we’re lookin’ for,
not glory. The hundhred of ye must get up a conthrivance
for cartin’ the corpses to the facthory in Youghal, where
we'll put ’em into good conthract coffins an’ give ’em a
dacent buryin’. I was towld yestherday,” says he, “ that
at a neighborin’ fort there was a crowd of Tallyans, an’
I intinds to have the first thry at the furriners, by way of
practice.”
Well, in the coorse of a week Rolly got things into
shape, an’ out he marches, with the fightin’ throops in the
front an’ the thradin’ throops in the rear, agen this fort
the Tallyans wor howldin.’ The poor craychurs of fur-
riners, men, women, an’ childer, whin they saw the great
army bearin’ down on ’em, sent a flag of thruce up to the
mast-head of the fort an’ axed for a parlez-vous, but dick-
ens a parlez-vous Rolly would give ’em, an’ while you’d
be lookin’ about you, he had the whole place sthrewn wud
corpses; an’ when the front army got tired of massacrayin’
68
914 IRISH LITERATURE.
the furriners, his own hundhred men went in, just as he
had towld ’em, and finished off the wounded.
Six hundhred corpses they gothered up that day an’
carted into Youghal; an’ Rolly was in high feather as he
stood at the facthory gate tallyin’ the coffins as they wor
carried out an’ heaved into a neighborin’ thrench.
“II make a clane five hundhred pound on that job,”
says he. “If I can keep up this game, I’ll soon be able to
write home.”
An’ sure enough, keep it up he did, an’ the facthory was
in full swing for a long spell; an’ then he bethought him
that Queen Eleezabeth ’ud like to hear how he was gettin’
on, 80, bein’ a great hand at the pen, he sat down wan day
an’ sent her off a long letther, which to the best of my
memory was written this way :—
“ May it plaize your Majesty, Queen Eleezabeth.
“JT write these few lines, hopin’ they will find you in
good health, as this laives me at prisent.
“I’m gettin’ on grand here. I suppose the head-clerk
of your Coort has towld you that I’m billin’ him for a
thousand coffins a week on the average. I’m sorry to say
there isn’t as much profit on the job as I expected, an’ I’m
sadly afeard my foreman is chaytin’ me on the putty ac-
count, but if I only catches him playin’ thricks on me, you
may depind III include him in the coffin bill purty quick.
He’s a native of these parts, an’ ’t isn’t clear to me he isn’t
risin’ a rebellion among the facthory hands agen me.
“This is a mighty poor counthry. I’ve prodded it in all
parts for goold an’ diamonds, but there isn’t as much as a
scuttle of coal to be found anywhere in it.
“I met a man the other day that lives over beyant here,
by the name of Spinser. He tells me yerself an’ himself
knows aich other, an’ often I rides over to his place in the
cool of the evenin’, an’ we haves a talk over the gay doin’s
at the London Coort. He’s writin’ a long ballad now, an’
between ourselves he nearly dhrives me crazy at times
dhronin’ long rigmaroles of his own writin’ into my ears;
but I’m goin’ to have my revinge agen him wan of these
fine days by bringin’ over a ballad I’m writin’ meself, an’
maybe when he’s had a few hours of it he'll come to his
sinses,
EDMUND DOWNEY. 915
“ An’ now I'll be sayin’ good by, go no more at prisent
from your faithful Undhertaker,
“ BIR WALTHER ROLLY.
“P, §.—If things goes on as they promise, I'll have to
start a gas-ingine here purty soon.”
ELLEN MARY PATRICK DOWNING.
(1828—1869,)
ELLEN Downmna, known as “Mary of The Nation,” was born in
Cork, March 19, 1828, She first wrote over her initials, and after-
ward signed her verses ‘‘Mary.” She contributed also to The
United Irishman and to The Cork Magazine. She ‘‘ formed an at-
tachment,” writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan, ‘to one of the ‘ Young Ire-
land’ writers. In Forty-eight he became a fugitive. Alas! in
foreign climes he learned to forget home vows. sank under
the blow. She put by the lyre, and in utter seclusion from the
world lingered for a while ; but ere long the spring flowers blossomed
on her ve.” She died in a convent, where she had taken the
name of Sister Mary Alphonsus, in 1869.
Her poems are simple and graceful, and many of them full of
devout feeling. .
Only two collections of them have been published : ‘ Voices of
the Heart’ and ' Poems for Children.’
MY OWEN.
Proud of you, fond of you, clinging so near to you,
Light is my heart now I know I am dear to you!
Glad is my voice now, so free it may sing to you
All the wild love that is burning within for you!
Tell me once more, tell it over and over,
The tale of that eve that first saw you my lover.
Now I need never blush
At my heart’s hottest gush;
The wife of my Owen her heart may discover.
Proud of you, fond of you, having all right in you!
Quitting all else through my love and delight in you!
Glad is my heart, since ’t is beating so nigh to you!
Light is my step, for it always may fly to you!
Clasped in your arms, where no sorrow can reach to me,
Reading your eyes till new love they shall teach to me,
Though wild and weak till now,
By that blessed marriage vow,
More than the wisest know your heart shall preach to me.
TALK BY THE BLACKWATER.
Faint are the breezes, and pure is the tide,
Soft is the sunshine, and you by my side;
6
THE RIVER BLACKWATER
From a photograph
One of the most beautiful rivers in Ireland, if not in
the world. Its charm and delights have been tcld in
song and story more than perhaps any other piece of nat-
ural scenery, and a thousand historical associations cluster
about its name. B
“Dear are the green banks we-wander upon,
Dear is our own river glancing along, :
Dearcr the trust that as tranquil will be,
The tides of the future for you.and for me.”
—Ellen M. F. Downing.
oaviesy Google
ELLEN MARY PATRICK: DOWNING. 917
°T is just such an evening to dream of in sleep;
*T is just such a joy to remember and weep;
Never before since you called me your own
Were you, I, and nature so proudly alone—
Cushlamachree, ’t is blesséd to be
All the long summer eve talking to thee.
Dear are the green banks we wander upon;
Dear is our own river, glancing along;
Dearer the trust that as tranquil will be
The tides of the future for you and for me;
Dearest the thought, that, come weal or come woe,
Through storm or through sunshine together they ’ll flow—
Cushlamachree, ’t is blesséd to be
All the long summer eve thinking of thee.
Yon bark o’er the waters, how swiftly it glides!
My thoughts cannot guess to what haven it rides;
As little I know what the future brings near;
But our bark is the same, and I harbor no fear;
Whatever our fortunes, our hearts will be true;
Wherever the stream flows ’t will bear me with you—
Cushlamachree, ’t is blesaéd to be
Summer and winter time clinging to thee.
JAMES WARREN DOYLE.
(1786—1884.)
De. Dorie, ‘‘ the incomparable J. K. L.,” as Matthew Arnold
called him, was born in 1786 in the town of New Ross, County Wex-
ford. His father died when he was quite young, leaving his mother
in poverty. When he was eleven years old he watched from be-
hind a hedge the battle of New Ross. In 1800, he was placed under
the care of the Rev. John Crane, an Augustine monk. With him
he spent two years, and in 1805 entered the convent of Granstown,
near Carnsore Point in Wexford, where in 1806 he took the vows.
He afterward studied for two years in the University of Coimbra
in Portugal.
While there he was called upon to take part in the Peninsular
war, and, being acquainted with the Portuguese language, was em-
ployed by Sir Arthur Wellesley as confidential agent and to com-
municate with the Portuguese government. In this capacity Doyle
acquitted himself well, and after the defeat of the French the
Portuguese government recognized his diplomatic talent and re-
ceived him with honor at court. Brilliant prospects were also held
out to induce him to embrace a political career, but he remained
firm to his original purpose of devoting himself to the ministry.
He returned to Ireland in 1808, and was ordained a priest. After
about three years in his convent his learning and ability became
known, and he was appointed in 1813 professor of rhetoric and
afterward of theology in Carlow College. An anecdote is related
in connection with his appointment. He was introduced to Dean
Staunton, the President. ‘‘ What can you teach?” inquired the
Dean. “Anything,” replied Doyle, ‘from A B C to the ‘ Third
Book of Canon Law.’” The President did not altogether like the
confidence of the answer, and he rejoined: ‘Pray, young man,
can you teach and practice humility?” ‘I trust I have at least
the humility to feel,” answered Doyle, ‘‘ that the more I read the
more I see how ignorant I have been, and how little can at best be
known.” The President was so struck with the reply that he mused,
“You "ll do.”
In 1819 he was nominated to the bishopric of Kildare and Leigh-
lin. The election was confirmed at Rome, and, although he was a
very young man to be a bishop, his force of character and personal
attention to his various parishes soon brought about a wonderful
reformation of the abuses that existed in many of them.
Over the signature of ‘‘ J. K. L.” (James of Kildare and Leigh-
lin) he wrote eloquent letters in defense of his Church, aided in the
circulation of the Bible, and advocated strongly the union of the
Churches of Rome and England, in preference to the Repeal, which
was then being agitated for. His letters on this subject caused a
great sensation at the time, coming, as they did, from a Roman
Catholic bishop. He was also a great advocate for a united system
918
JAMES WARREN DOYLE. 919
of education very similar to the Irish national system of education
of the present day. In 1822 he opposed the veto ; and in 1824 his
statesmanlike abilities and deep knowledge of Irish affairs as shown
in his political writings was so widely recognized that he was sum-
moned to attend before a committee of the Lords and Commons to
be examined relative to the state of affairs in Ireland. At this time
the Duke of Wellington was asked by some one if they were ex-
amining Doyle. He replied, ‘‘ No, but Doyle is examining us.”
His evidence, given during several days, wasso much appreciated,
and excited so much gratitude among his countrymen, that on his
return a residence about a mile from Carlow was purchased and
presented to him as a token of their esteem. In 1825 he wrote
twelve letters on the state of Ireland, followed by a letter addressed
to Lord Liverpool on Catholic claims. For years he continued the
eloquent champion of these claims, and proved they might be
defended both logically and reasonably, an entirely new revelation
for the majority of Englishmen and Protestanta.
His consistent self-denial and anxious labor of mind and body
told heavily upon him ; and when he died, June 16, 1834, aged only
forty-eight years, his appearance was more that of an old man
than of one in the prime of life. His remains were interred in the
central aisle of the Cathedral of Carlow, which he had built, and the
funeral was attended by more than twenty thousand people. His
last literary work was a preface to Butler's ‘ Lives of the Saints.’
‘The Life, Times, and Rorrespondence of Dr. Doyle,’ by Mr. Fitz-
patrick, isan admirable and discriminating biography and a graphic
picture of the times in which the eloquent prelate lived.
THE TRUE FRIENDS OF THE POOR AND THE
AFFLICTED.
A PICTURE OF SUFFERING IRELAND.
From ‘ Letters on the State of Ireland.’
I am laboring as the advocate of the poor, of the unpro-
tected, and of the distressed. I can ask with Cicero how
could I fail to be interested in the general agitation of
religious and political, civil and ecclesiastical interests;
or how could I be insensible to the generous impulse
of our nature? St. Paul himself exclaims: “ Quis infir-
matur et ego non infirmor, quis scandilizatur et ego non
uror.” In every nation a clergyman is separated from
society only that he may labor the more efficiently for his
fellow-men, and his duty of administering to their tem-
poral wants is not less pressing than that of devoting him-
920 IRISH LITERATURE.
self to their spiritual concerns. The one ought to be done
by him, and the other ought not to be neglected.
There are times and circumstances when he is justified,
nay, when he is obliged, to mix with his fellow-countrymen,
and to suspend his clerical functions whilst he discharges
those of a member of society. I myself have once been
placed in such circumstances, and devoted many a labo-
rious hour to the service of a people engaged in the defense
of their rights and liberties. The clerical profession exalts
and strengthens the natural obligation we are all under
of laboring for our country’s welfare; and the priests and
prophets of the old law have not only announced and ad-
ministered the decrees of Heaven, but have aided by their
counsel and their conduct the society to which Providence
attached them. In the Christian dispensation priests and
bishops have greatly contributed to the civilization and
improvement of mankind; they have restrained ambition,
they have checked turbulence, they have enlightened the
councils of kings, and infused their own wisdom into
laws and public institutions. Arts and sciences are their
debtors; history and jurisprudence have been cultivated by
them. They have been the teachers of mankind, and have
alone been able to check the insolence of power, or plead
before it the cause of the oppressed.
The clergy of the Catholic Church have been accused of
many faults; but in no nation or at no time—not even by
the writers of the reign of Henry the Eighth—have they
been charged with betraying this sacred trust, or embez-
zling the property of the poor. In Ireland, above all, where
their possessions were immense, their hearts were never
corrupted by riches; and, whether during the incursions
of the Danes, or the civil wars, or foreign invasions, which
desolated the country, it was the clergy who repaired the
ravages that were committed, rebuilt cities and churches,
restored the fallen seats of literature, gave solemnity to
the divine worship, and opened numberless asylums for the
poor. Whilst Ireland, though a prey to many evils, was
blessed with such a clergy, her poor required no extraor-
dinary aid; the heavenly virtue of charity was seen to
walk unmolested over the ruins of towns and cities, to
collect the wanderer, to shelter the houseless, to support
the infirm, to clothe the naked, and to minister to every,
JAMES WARREN DOYLE. 921
species of human distress; but “ fuit Ilium et ingens gloria
Dardanidum!”
When the ancient religion was expelled from her pos-
sessions, and another inducted in her place, the church
and the hospital and the cabin of the destitute became
alike deserted, or fell into utter ruin. This change, with
the others which accompanied or followed after it, in
Ireland threw back all our social and religious institutions
into what is generally called a state of nature—a state,
such as Hobbes describes it, in which men are always arm-
ing or engaged in war. Clergymen, so-called, still ap-
peared amongst their fellow-men, but they were no longer
é“ of the seed of those by whom salvation had been wrought
in Israel ”; they did not consider it a portion of their duty
to be employed in works of mercy, or to devote the prop-
erty which had passed into their hands to those sacred
purposes for which it was originally destined. They were
like the generality of mankind, solely intent on individual
gain, or the support or aggrandizement of their families,
but totally regardless of those sublime virtues or exalt-
ed charities which the Gospel recommends. They found
themselves vested with a title to the property of the poor;
they did not stop to inquire whether they held it in trust;
there was no friend to humanity who would impeach them
for abuse, and they appropriated all, everything to which
they could extend their rapacious grasp. The churches
were suffered to decay, and the spacious cloister or tower-
ing dome through which the voice of prayer once resound-
ed became for a while the resort of owls and bats, till time
razed their foundations and mixed up their ruins with the
dust. The poor were cast out into the wilderness, and
left, like Ishmael, to die; whilst Ireland, like the afflicted
mother of the rejected child, cast her last sad looks towards
them, and then left them to perish. These men “ate the
milk, and clothed themselves with the wool, and killed
that which was fat; but the flock they did not feed, the
weak they did not strengthen, and that which was sick
they did not heal, neither did they seek for that which was
lost; but they ruled over them with rigor and with a high
hand.” They could not be blamed; they had a title and
a calling different from their predecessors; and the state,
922 IRISH LITERATURE.
from which they derived their commission, could not in-
fuse into them virtues which can only emanate from Christ.
The evidence already given to Parliament shows that
the average wages of a laboring man in Ireland (and a
great mass of the poor are laborers) is worth scarcely
THREEPENCE A DAY! Threepence' a day for such as obtain
employment, whilst in a family where one or two persons
are employed there may be four, perhaps six, others de-
pendent on these two for their support! Good God! an
entire family to be lodged, clothed, fed, on THREEPENCE A '
pay! Less than the average price of a single stone of
potatoes; equal only to the value of a single quart of oat-
meal! What further illustration can be required? Why
refer to the nakedness, to the hunger of individuals? Why
speak of parishes receiving extreme unction before they ex-
pired of hunger? Why be surprised at men feeding on
manure; of contending with the cattle about the weeds;
of being lodged in huts and sleeping on the clay; of being
destitute of energy, of education, of the virtues or qualities
of the children of men? Is it not clear, is it not evident,
that the great mass of the poor are in a state of habitual
famine, the prey of every mental and bodily disease? Why
are we surprised at the specters who haunt our dwellings,
whose tales of distress rend our hearts—at the distracted
air and incoherent language of the wretched father who
starts from the presence of his famished wife and children,
and gives vent abroad in disjointed sounds to the agony of
his soul? :
How often have I met and labored to console such a
father! How often have I endeavored to justify to him
the ways of Providence, and check the blasphemy against,
Heaven which was already seated on his tongue! How
often have I seen the visage of youth, which should be red
with vigor, pale and emaciated, and the man who had
scarcely seen his fortieth year withered like the autumn
leaf, and his face furrowed with the wrinkles of old age!
How often has the virgin, pure and spotless as the snow of
heaven, detailed to me the miseries of her family, her own
destitution, and sought through the ministry of Christ for
some supernatural support whereby to resist the allure-
ments of the seducer and to preserve untainted the dearest
1 About five cents.
JAMES WARREN DOYLE. 923
virtue of her soul! But above all, how often have I viewed
with my eyes, in the person of the wife and of the widow,
of the aged and the orphan, the aggregate of all the misery
which it was possible for human nature to sustain! And
how often have these persons disappeared from my eyes,
returned to their wretched abode, and closed in the cold
embrace of death their lives and their misfortunes! What
light can be shed on the distresses of the Irish poor by
statements of facts when their notoriety and extent are
. known throughout the earth?
But Ireland, always unhappy, always oppressed, is re-
viled when she complains, is persecuted when she struggles;
her evils are suffered to corrode her, and her wrongs are
never to be redressed! We look to her pastures, and they
teem with milk and fatness; to her fields, and they are cov-
ered with bread; to her flocks, and they are as numerous as
the bees which encircle the hive; to her ports, they are safe
and spacious; to her rivers, they are deep and navigable;
to her inhabitants, they are industrious, brave, and intelli-
gent as any people on earth; to her position on the globe,
and she seems to be intended as the emporium of wealth,
as the mart of universal commerce; and yet, . . . but no,
we will not state the causes, they are obvious to the sight
and to the touch; it is enough that the mass of her children
are the most wretched of any civilized people on the globe.
WILLIAM DRENNAN.
(1764—1820.)
De. Drennan, who first gave Ireland the name of “: The Emerald
Isle,” was born in Belfast in 1754. He studied medicine in the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh ; took his degree of M.D. in 1778, practiced
for some years in Beltast and Newry, and removed to Dublin in
1789. He became one of the ablest writers in favor of the United
Irishmen movement, and bis Pes peed of Orellana’ had much to
lo in gettii r to join tl le.
In 1794 he and Mr. Éowan were put on trial for issuing the
famous Address of the United Irishmen to the Volunteers of Ire-
land. Curran defended Rowan, who however was fined in £500
($2,500) and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, while Dren-
nan, who was the real writer of the Paper, had the good fortune to
be acquitted. He afterward removed to Belfast, where he com-
menced The Belfast Magazine. In 1815 he issued a little volume
entitled ‘Glendalough, and other Poems,’ which is now very rare.
He died in February, 1820.
Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue, in ‘ A Treasury of Irish Poetry,’ considers
his verses ‘‘ perhaps rhetoric rather than poetry, but the rhetoric
is always strong and sincere.” They are certainly vigorous and
graceful ; and his hymns En much of beauty. Moore is said
to have esteemed ' en Erin First Rose’ the most perfect of mod-
ern songs. His ‘Wake of William Orr’ electrified the nation on
its appearance, and did more hurt to the Government than the loss
of a battle. Mr. O'Donoghue considers it his best piece.
ERIN.
When Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood
God blessed the green Island, and saw it was good;
The em’rald of Europe, it sparkled and shone—
In the ring of the world the most precious stone.
In her sun, in her soil, in her station thrice blest,
With her back towards Britain, her face to the West,
Erin stands proudly insular on her steep shore,
And strikes her high harp ’mid the ocean’s deep roar.
But when its soft tones seem to mourn and to weep,
The dark chain of silence is thrown o’er the deep;
At the thought of the past the tears gush from her eyes
And the pulse of her heart makes her white bosom rise.
Oh! sons of green Erin, lament o’er the time
When religion was war and our country a crime;
When man in God’s image inverted His plan,
And moulded his God in the image of man;
WILLIAM DRENNAN. 925
When the int’rest of State wrought the general woe,
The stranger a friend and the native a foe;
While the mother rejoiced o’er her children oppressed
And clasped the invader more close to her breast ;
When with Pale for the body and Pale for the soul,
Church and State joined in compact to conquer the whole,
And, as Shannon was stained with Milesian blood,
Eyed each other askance and pronounced it was good.
By the groans that ascend from your forefathers’ grave
For their country thus left to the brute and the slave,
Drive the demon of Bigotry home to his den,
And where Britain made brutes now let Erin make men.
Let my sons, like the leaves of the shamrock, unite—
A partition of sects from one footstalk of right;
Give each his full share of the earth and the sky,
Nor fatten the slave where the serpent would die.
Alas! for poor Erin that some are still seen
Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to Green:
Yet, oh! when you’re up and they ’re down, let them live,
Then yield them that mercy which they would not give.
Arm of Erin, be strong! but be gentle as brave!
And, uplifted to strike, be as ready to save!
Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile
The cause or the men of the Emerald Isle.
The cause it is good, and the men they are true,
And the Green shall outlive both the Orange and Blue!
And the triumphs of Erin her daughters shall share
With the full swelling chest and the fair flowing hair.
Their bosom heaves high for the worthy and brave,
But no coward shall rest in that soft-swelling wave.
Men of Erin! awake, and make haste to be blest!
Rise, Arch of the Ocean and Queen of the West!
THE WAKE OF WILLIAM ORR.
There our murdered brother lies;
Wake him not with woman’s cries;
Mourn the way that manhood ought—
Sit in silent trance of thought.
926
IRISH LITERATURE.
Write his merits on your mind;
Morals pure and manners kind;
In his head, as on a hill,
Virtue placed her citadel.
Why cut off in palmy youth?
Truth he spoke, and acted truth.
“ Countrymen, UNITE,” he cried,
And died for what our Saviour died.
God of peace and God of love!
Let it not Thy vengeance move—
Let it not Thy lightnings draw—
A nation guillotined by law.
Hapless Nation, rent and torn,
Thou wert early taught to mourn;
Warfare of six hundred years!
Epochs marked with blood and tears!
Hunted thro’ thy native grounds,
Or flung reward to human hounds,
Each one pulled and tore his share,
Heedless of thy deep despair.
Hapless Nation! hapless Land!
Heap of uncementing sand!
Crumbled by a foreign weight:
And by worse, domestic hate.
God of mercy! God of peace!
Make this mad confusion cease;
O’er the mental chaos move,
Through it speak the light of love.
Monstrous and unbappy sight!
Brothers’ blood will not unite;
Holy oil and holy water
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter.
Who is she with aspect wild?
The widowed mother with her child—
Child new stirring in the womb!
Husband waiting for the tomb!
WILLIAM DRENNAN. 927
Angel of this sacred place,
Calm her soul and whisper peace—
Cord, or axe, or guillotine,
Make the sentence—not the sin.
Here we watch our brother’s sleep:
Watch with us, but do not weep:
Watch with us thro’ dead of night—
But expect the morning light.
Conquer fortune—persevere !—
Lo! it breaks, the morning clear!
The cheerful cock awakes the skies,
The day is come—arise !—arise!
WILLIAM DRENNAN, JR.
(1802—1878.)
Mr. Drennan, the gon of Dr. Drennan, was born in Dublin in 1803
and was graduated from Trinity College in 1823. His famous bal-
lad ‘The Battle of Beal-an-atha-buidh’ was published in The Nation
in 1843 without a name, but it is included in the volume entitled
“ Glendalloch and other Poems,’ which was published in 1850.
THE BATTLE OF BEAL-AN-ATHA-BUIDH?
1598.
By O'Neill close beleaguered, the spirits might droop
Of the Saxon—three hundred shut up in their coop,
Till Bagenal drew forth his Toledo, and swore,
On the sword of a soldier to succor Portmore.
His veteran troops, in the foreign wars tried—
Their features how bronzed, and how haughty their stride—
Stept steadily on; it was thrilling to see
That thunder-cloud brooding o’er BEAL-AN-ATHA-BUIDH.
The flash of their armor, inlaid with fine gold,—
Gleaming matchlocks and cannons that mutteringly rolled—
With the tramp and the clank of those stern cuirassiers,
Dyed in the blood of the Flemish and French cavaliers.
And are the mere Irish, with pikes and with darts—
With but glib-covered heads, and but rib-guarded hearts—
Half-naked, half-fed, with few muskets, no guns—
The battle to dare against England’s stout sons?
Poor Bonnochts? and wild Gallowglasses, and Kern—
Let them war with rude brambles, sharp furze, and dry fern;
Wirrastrue® for their wives—for their babies ochanie,*
If they wait for the Saxon at BEAL-AN-ATHA-BUIDH.
Yet O'Neill standeth firm—few and brief his commands—
“Ye have hearts in your bosoms, and pikes in your hands;
1 Beal-an-atha-buidh literally means the Mouth of the Yellow Ford,
and is pronounced Beal-un-ath-buie.
{Bonnocht,a billeted soldier |
8 Wirrastrue (A Mhuire as truagh), Oh ! Mary, what sorrow !
“ Ochanie—ochone, woe. ag
928
WILLIAM DRENNAN, JR. 929°
Try how far ye can push them, my children, at once;
Fag-a-Bealach!1—and down with horse, foot, and great guns.
They have gold and gay arms—they have biscuit and bread;
Now, sons of my soul, we’ll be found and be fed;”
And he clutched his claymore, and—“ look yonder,” laughed
he,
“What a grand commissariat for BEAL-AN-ATHA-BUIDH.”
Near the chief, a grim tyke, an O’Shanaghan stood,
His nostrils dilated seemed snuffing for blood;
Rough and ready to spring, like the wiry wolf-hound
Of Ierné, who, tossing his pike with a bound,
Cried, “ My hand to the Sassenach! ne’er may I hurl
Another to earth if I call him a churl!
He finds me in clothing, in booty, in bread—
My Chief, won’t O’Shanaghan give him a bed?”
“Land of Owen, aboo!” and the Irish rushed on—
The foe fired but one volley—their gunners are gone;
Before the bare bosoms the steel-coats have fled,
Or, despite casque or corslet, lie dying and dead.
And brave Harry Bagenal, he fell while he fought
With many gay gallants—they slept as men ought;
Their faces to Heaven—there were others, alack!
By pikes overtaken, and taken aback.
And my Irish got clothing, coin, colors, great store,
Arms, forage, and provender—plunder go leor!?
They munched the white manchets—they champed the brown
chine,
Fuilleluah!* for that day, how the natives did dine!
The Chieftain looked on, when O’Shanaghan rose,
And cried, “ Hearken, O’Neill! I’ve a health to propose—
‘To our Sassenach hosts’” and all quaffed in huge glee.
With “ Cead mile failte got BEAL-AN-ATHA-BUIDH!”
1 Fag-a-Bealach, olear the way.
$ Go leor, in abundance. $ Fuilleluah, joyous exclamation,
4 Cead mile failte go, a hundred thor welcomes to.
WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND.
(1778—1865.)
WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND was born at Larne, County Antrim,
in 1778. He was educated at Belfast Academy under James Crom-
bie. Later he entered Glasgow College to study for the mini: 8
but he was too poor to finish his course. He did, however, study
by himself and entered the Church. He taught or preached
throughout his life.
He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy and one of the
first members of the Belfast Literary Society. He took a scholarly
interest in Celtic literature. In mature life he became a polemic,
and his writings are noted for sharpness and vivacity. Of these
his essay on the ‘ Doctrine of the Trinity’ is the best. He wrote
much poetry, including the ‘ Battle of Trafalgar ’ and ‘ The Giant's
Causeway,’ also a work on ancient Irish minstrelsy. He died in
1865.
ODE WRITTEN ON LEAVING IRELAND.
From the Irish of Gerald Nugent.
What sorrow wrings my bleeding heart,
To flee from Innisfail!
Oh, anguish from her scenes to part,
Of mountain, wood, and vale!
Vales that the hum of bees resound,
And plains where generous steeds abound.
While wafted by the breeze’s wing,
I see fair Fintan’s shore recede,
More poignant griefs my bosom wring,
The farther eastward still I speed.
With Erin’s love my bosom warms,
No soil but hers for me has charms.
A soil enriched with verdant bowers,
And groves with mellow fruits that teem;
A soil of fair and fragrant flowers,
Of verdant turf and crystal stream:
Rich plains of Ir, that bearded corn,
And balmy herbs, and shrubs adorn.
A land that boasts a pious race,
A land of heroes brave and bold;
930
WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND. 931
Enriched with every female grace
Are Banba’s maids with locks of gold.
Of men, none with her sons compare;
No maidens with her daughters fair.
If Heaven, propitious to my vow,
Grant the desire with which I burn,
Again the foamy deep to plow,
And to my native shores return;
“ Speed on,” I’ll cry, “my galley fleet,
Nor e’er the crafty Saxon greet.”
No perils of the stormy deep
I dread—yet sorrow wounds my heart;
To leave thee, Leogaire’s fort, I weep;
From thee, sweet Delvin, must I part!
Oh! hard the task—oh! lot severe,
To flee from all my soul holds dear.
Farewell, ye kind and generous bards,
Bound to my soul by friendship strong;
And ye Dundargvais’ happy lands,
Ye festive halls—ye sons of song;
Ye generous friends in Meath who dwell,
Beloved, adored, farewell! farewell!
LADY DUFFERIN.
(1807—1867.)
HELEN SELINA SHERIDAN was born in 1807. She was the eldest
daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and granddaughter of Richard
Brinsley Sheridan. She was brought up with her sisters, the Hon-
orable Mrs, Norton (Lady Stirling-Maxwell) and the Duchess of
Somerset, in the seclusion of Hampton Court, whither her mother
had retired on the death of Mr. Sheridan,
Helen inherited the genius of the Sheridan family, and enjoyed
the additional advantage of sharing with her sisters the careful
training of a devoted mother, a lady distinguished by her good
sense and intellectual ability. At the age of eighteen she married
the Hon. Price Blackwood, afterward Lord Dufferin, and the fol-
lowing year (1826) became the mother of the late Earl of Dufferin,
her only son.
The inheritor and transmitter of genius, the brilliant mother of a
brilliant son, hers was one of the most enviable fates for the poet
and artist. To hear her exquisitely artless songs on the lips of
her own people was Lady Dufferin'’s happy lot. Her ‘Irish Emi-
grant’ is known the wide world over, and, being one of the earli-
est things learned by Irish school-children, it comes to share in
later life the haunting quality which belongs to memories of those
dim years when the impressions are only awakening.
The benevolent and kindly nature of ly Dufferin, and her grace
of manner, soon secured the esteem and affection of the people, who
felt that she understood and sympathized with their joys and sor-
rows, Hence the popularity of her ballads and songs, which were
not due to any desire for literary fame, but were the genuine out-
come of a warm and sympathetic spirit. Of all her pieces ‘The
Irish Emigrant’ is the universal favorite. Nothing could surpass
its simple and touching pathos and fidelity to nature, particularly
Irish nature, and on it alone Lady Dufferin’s fame as a poet
might safely rest. ‘Terence’s Farewell’ and ‘ Katey’s Letter,’ both
rich inhumor, are also extremely popular. ‘Sweet Kilkenny Town,’
a reply to ‘Katey’s Letter,’ set to music by the authoress, is not,
perhaps, go widely known. No collection of her ballads and poems
been made, and many of them are doubtless lost, only the most
popular having been preserved in various selections of Irish poetry.
She also produced an amusing and piquant prose work entitled
‘The Honorable Impulsia Gushington.’ It is a satire on high life
in the nineteenth century. Although written in alightand humor-
ous style, her ladyship tells us in the preface it ‘‘ was intended to
serve an earnest purpose in lightening the tedium and depression of
long sickness in the person of a beloved friend.”
In 1841 Lord Dufferin died, and her ladyship remained a widow
for twenty-one years, when she married the Earl of Gifford, at the
time nearly on his death-bed. Two months afterward she became
for the second time a widow, and Dowager Countess of Gifford.
932
LADY DUFFERIN
From the engraving by H. Robinson, after the drawing by
F. Stone
LADY DUFFERIN.
For some years previous to her death this amiable lady was afflicted
with a painful illness, which she endured with fortitude and resig-
nation. She expired June 13, 1867, leaving a memory dear to every
LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT.
I’m sittin’ on the stile, Mary,
Where we sat side by side,
On a bright May mornin’, long ago,
When first you were my bride:
The corn was springin’ fresh and green,
And the lark sang loud and high—
And the red was on your lip, Mary,
And the lovelight in your eye.
The place is little changed, Mary;
The day is bright as then;
The lark’s loud song is in my ear,
And the corn is green again;
But I miss the soft clasp of your hand,
And your breath, warm on my cheek,
And I still keep list’nin’ for the words
You never more will speak.
°T is but a step down yonder lane,
And the little church stands near—
The church where we were wed, Mary;
I see the spire from here.
But the graveyard lies between, Mary,
And my step might break your rest—
For I’ve laid you, darling! down to sleep
With your baby on your breast.
I’m very lonely now, Mary,
For the poor make no new friends:
But, oh! they love the better still,
The few our Father sends!
And you were all J had, Mary—
My blessin’ and my pride!
There ’s nothin’ left to care for now,
Since my poor Mary died.
Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary,
That still kept hoping on
When the trust in God had left my soul,
And my arm’s young strength was gone;
IRISH LITERATURE.
There was comfort ever on your lip
And the kind look on your brow—
I bless you, Mary, for that same,
Though you cannot hear me now.
I thank you for the patient smile
When your heart was fit to break,
When the hunger-pain was gnawin’ there,
And you hid it for my sake;
I bless you for the pleasant word
When your heart was sad and sore—
Oh! I’m thankful you are gone, Mary,
Where grief can’t reach you more!
I'm biddin’ you a long farewell,
My Mary—kind and true!
But I'll not forget you, darling,
In the land I’m goin’ to:
They say there a bread and work for all,
And the sun shines always there—
But Ill not forget Old Ireland,
Were it fifty times as fair!
And often in those grand old woods
I'll sit and shut my eyes,
And my heart will travel back again
To the place where Mary lies;
And III think I see the little stile
Where we sat side by side,
And the springin’ corn, and the bright May morn,
When first you were my bride.
TERENCE’S FAREWELL.
Bo, my Kathleen, you re going to leave me
All alone by myself in this place,
But I’m sure you will never deceive me—
Oh no, if there’s truth in that face.
Though England ’s a beautiful city,
Full of illigant boys—oh, what then?
You would not forget your poor Terence;
You ll come back to Ould Ireland again.
LADY DUFFERIN.
Och, those English, deceivers by nature,
Though maybe you’d think them sincere,
They ’ll say you’re a sweet charming creature,
But don’t you believe them, my dear.
No, Kathleen, agra! don’t be minding
The flattering speeches they ’ll make;
Just tell them a poor boy in Ireland
Is breaking his heart for your sake.
It’s folly to keep you from going,
Though, faith, it’s a mighty hard case—
For, Kathleen, you know, there ’s no knowing
When next I shall see your sweet face.
And when you come back to me, Kathleen—
None the better will I be off then—
You ’ll be spaking such beautiful English,
Sure, I won’t know my Kathleen again.
Eh, now, where ’s the need of this hurry?
Don’t flutter me so in this way!
I’ve forgot, ’twixt the grief and the flurry,
Every word I was maning to say.
Now just wait a minute, I bid ye—
Can I talk if you bother me so?—
Oh, Kathleen, my blessing go wid ye
Ev'ry inch of the way that you go.
KATEY’S LETTER.
Och, girls dear, did you ever hear,
I wrote my love a letter?
And altho’ he cannot read,
I thought ’t was all the better.
For why should he be puzzled
With hard spelling in the matter,
When the maning was so plain?
That I loved him faithfully,
And he knows it—oh, he knows it—
Without one word from me.
I wrote it, and I folded it,
And put a seal upon it,
*T was a seal almost as big
As the crown of my best bonnet;
IRISH LITERATURE.
For I would not have the postmaster .
Make his remarks upon it,
As Id said inside the letter
That I loved him faithfully,
And he knows it—oh, he knows it—
Without one word from me.
My heart was full, but when I wrote
I dare not put it half in;
The neighbors know I love him,
And they ’re mighty fond of chaffing,
Bo I dare not write his name outside,
For fear they would be laughing,
Bo I wrote “From little Kate to one
Whom she loves faithfully,”
And he knows it—oh, he knows it—
Without one word from me.
Now, girls, would you believe it,
That postman, so consated,
No answer will he bring me,
So long as I have waited;
But maybe—there mayn’t be one,
For the reason that I stated—
That my love can neither read nor write,
But loves me faithfully,
And I know where’er my love is,
That he is true to me.
LORD DUFFERIN.
(1826—1902.)
Tue RiGHT Hon. Freperick TEMPLE BLackwoop, Earl of Dufferin,
was son of the fourth Baron Dufferin, and was born in 1826. His
mother was the granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and
thus he was one more of the long list of the Sheridans who have
proved that wit can run in families. He was educated at Eton and
at Christ Church, Oxford, but did not take a degree. He was still
a minor when, in 1841, he succeeded to his father’s title.
His first literary production was a narrative of a visit he made
to Ireland during 1846-47, under the title of ‘ Narrative of a Journey
from Oxford to Skibbereen during the year of the Irish Famine.’
In February, 1855, he formed one of the numerous train which
accompanied Lord John Russell to Vienna. In 1860 appeared the
first work that drew particular attention to hisname. In this book
there is abundant evidence of those great gifts of humorous obser-
vation which were his delightful characteristic. He had in the
previous year made a voy: in his yacht to Iceland, and an ac-
count of his stay in that island appeared in ‘Lettera from High
Latitudes.’ This book bubbles over with fun, and his description
of an Icelandic dinner-party can be read by few, we think, without
aching sides.
His first real entrance into official life was made in 1860, when
he was sent to Syria as British Commissioner, for the purpose of
inquiring into cruelties which had been practiced by Turkish of-
ficials on the Christian population. He pursued his investigations
with relentless vigilance, and administered condign punishment to
the moet notable malefactors, The home authorities were thoroughly
satisfied with his action, and he was made a Knight of the Bath.
In 1864 he became for a while Under Secretary for India, and dur-
ing the year 1866 he acted as Under Secretary for War.
In 1868 Lord Dufferin was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan-
caster, an office with undefined duties, which constituted him, as
he wittily described it, ‘‘ maid of all work” to the Ministry. In
1872 he was appointed Governor-General of Canada. Never was
there a more successful ruler. The Orangeman and the Roman
Catholic, the Conservative and the Radical, alike bent under the
influence of his clear judgment, his impartial action, his pleasant
manners, and his bewitching tongue. The gi hes which he made
have been collected into volume form, and they can be read with a
leasure that one rarely experiences when perusing spoken addresses
in print. Their chief characteristics are a lofty tone of feeling,
bright wit, and, occasionally, eloquence of a high order. On his
retirement from the Canadian governorship he was chosen by Lord
Beaconsfield as British Ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg.
He was afterward Ambassador at the Ottoman Court, and in 1884
was appointed Governor-General of India. He was Ambassador to
937
938 IRISH LITERATURE.
Italy and to France. From 1891 to 1895 he was Lord Warden of
the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle. In 1890 he was
elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews University. He was made an
Earl of the United Kingdom in 1871, was ident of the Geo-
graphical Society, and an honorary LL.D. of Harvard University.
Besides the works above mentioned, Lord Dufferin wrote sev-
eral books on the questions that chiefiy disturb his native country.
Their titles are ‘Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ire-
land,’ “Mr. Mill’s Plan for the Pacification of Ireland Examined,’
and ‘Contributions to an Inquiry into the State of Ireland.’
This most brilliant Irishman died, to the regret of all creeds and
parties, in 1902.
ON IRISHMEN AS RULERS.
A speech delivered at Quebec, September 5, 1878.
Gentlemen,—I hardly know in what terms I am to reply
to the address I have just listened to, so signal is the honor
which you have conferred upon me. That a whole prov-
ince, as large, as important, as flourishing as many a
European kingdom, should erect into an embassy thé
mayors of its cities,—the delegates of its urban and rural
municipalities,—and dispatch them on a journey of several
hundred miles, to convey to a humble individual like my-
self an expression of the personal good-will of the con-
stituencies they represent, is a circumstance unparalleled
in the history of Canada, or of any other colony.
To staad as I now do in the presence of so many distin-
guished persons, who have put themselves to great personal
inconvenience on my account, only adds to my embarrass-
ment. And yet, gentlemen, I cannot pretend not to be de-
lighted with such a genuine demonstration of regard on
the part of the large-hearted inhabitants of the great prov-
ince in whose name you have addressed me; for, quite
apart from the personal gratification I experience, you are
teaching all future administrators of our affairs a lesson
which you may be sure they will gladly lay to heart, since
it will show them with how rich a reward you are ready to
pay whatever slight exertions it may be within their power
to make on your behalf.
And when in the history of your Dominion could such a
proof of your generosity be more opportunely shown? A
few weeks ago the heart of every man and women in Can-
LORD DUFFERIN. 939
ada was profoundly moved by the intelligence, not only
that the government of Great Britain was about to send
out as England’s representative to this country one of the
most promising among the younger generation of our pub-
lic men, but that the Queen herself was about to intrust to
the keeping of the people of Canada her own daughter. If
you desired any illustration of the respect, the affection,
the confidence with which you are regarded by your fellow-
subjects and by your sovereign at home, what greater proof
could you require than this, or what more gratifying, more
delicate, more touching recognition could have rewarded
your never-failing love and devotion for the mother country
and its ruler?
But though Parliament and the citizens of Canada may
well be proud of the confidence thus reposed in them, be-
lieve me when I tell you that, quite apart from these es-
pecial considerations, you may well be congratulated on
the happy choice which has been made in the person of
Lord Lorne for the future Governor-General of Canada.
It has been my good fortune to be connected all my life
long with his family by ties of the closest personal friend-
ship. Himself I have known, I may say, almost from his
boyhood, and a more conscientious, high-minded, or better
qualified viceroy could not have been selected. Brought
up under exceptionally fortunate conditions, it is needless
to say he has profited to the utmost by the advantages
placed within his reach, many of which will have fitted him
in an especial degree for his present post.
His public school and college education, his experience
of the House of Commons, his large personal acquaintance
with the representatives of all that is most distinguished
in the intellectual world of the United States, his literary
and artistic tastes, his foreign travel, will all combine to
render him intelligently sympathetic with every phase and
aspect of your national life. Above all, he comes of good
Whig stock—that is to say, of a family whose prominence
in history is founded upon the sacrifices they have made in
the cause of constitutional liberty. When a couple of a
man’s ancestors have perished on the scaffold as martyrs
in the cause of political and religious freedom, you may be
sure there is little likelihood of their descendant seeking
to encroach, when acting as the representative of the
940 IRISH LITERATURE.
Crown, upon the privileges of Parliament or the independ-
ence of the people.
As for your future princess, it would not become me to
enlarge upon her merits—she will soon be amongst you,
taking all hearts by storm by the grace, the suavity, the
sweet simplicity of her manners, life, and conversation.
Gentlemen, if ever there was a lady who in her earliest
youth had formed a high ideal of what a noble life should
be—if ever there was a human being who tried to make the
most of the opportunities within her reach, and to create
for herself, in spite of every possible trammel and impedi-
ment, a useful career and occasions of benefiting her fellow-
creatures, it is the Princess Louise, whose unpretending
exertions in a hundred different directions to be of service
to her country and generation have already won for her an
extraordinary amount of popularity at home.
When to this you add an artistic genius of the highest
order, and innumerable other personal gifts and accom-
plishments, combined with manners so gentle, so unpre-
tending, as to put every one who comes within reach of
her influence at perfect ease, you cannot fail to understand
that England is not merely sending you a royal princess of
majestic lineage, but a good and noble woman, in whom
the humblest settler or mechanic in Canada will find an
intelligent and sympathetic friend. Indeed, gentlemen, I
hardly know which pleases me most, the thought that the
superintendence of your destinies is to be confided to per-
sons go worthy of the trust, or that a dear friend of my own
like Lord Lorne, and a personage for whom I entertain such
respectful admiration as I do for the Princess Louise,
should commence their future labors in the midst of a com-
munity so indulgent, so friendly, so ready to take the will
for the deed, so generous in their recognition of any effort
to serve them, as you have proved yourselves to be.
And yet, alas! gentlemen, pleasant and agreeable as is
the prospect for you and them, we must acknowledge there
is one drawback to the picture. Lord Lorne has, as I have
said, a multitude of merits, but even spots will be discov-
ered on the sun, and unfortunately an irreparable, and, as
I may call it, a congenital defect attaches to this appoint-
ment. Lord Lorne is not an Irishman! It is not his fault
—he did the best he could for himself—he came as near the
LORD DUFFERIN. 941
right thing as possible by being born a Celtic Highlander.
There is no doubt the world is best administered by Irish-
men. Things never went better with us either at home or
abroad than when Lord Palmerston ruled Great Britain—
Lord Mayo governed India—Lord Monck directed the des-
tinies of Canada—and the Robinsons, the Kennedys, the
Laffans, the Callaghans, the Gores, the Hennesys, admin-
istered the affairs of our Australian colonies and West In-
dian possessions. Have not even the French at last made
the same discovery in the person of Marshal MacMahon?
But still we must be generous, and it is right Scotchmen
should have a turn. After all, Scotland only got her name
because she was conquered by the Irish—and if the real
truth were known, it is probable the house of Inverary
owes most of its glory to an Irish origin. Nay, I will goa
step further—I would even let the poor Englishman take
an occasional turn at the helm—if for no better reason
than to make him aware how much better we manage the
business. But you have not come to that yet, and though
you have been a little spoiled by having been given three
Trish governor-generals in succession, I am sure you will
find that your new viceroy’s personal and acquired quali-
fications will more than counterbalance his ethnological
disadvantages.
And now, gentlemen, I must bid you farewell. Never
shall I forget the welcome you extended to me in every
town and hamlet of Ontario when I first came amongst
you. It was in traveling through your beautiful province
I first learned te appreciate and understand the nature
and character of your destinies. It was there I first
learned to believe in Canada, and from that day to this my
faith has never wavered. Nay, the further I extended my
travels through the other provinces the more deeply my
initial impressions were confirmed; but it was amongst
you they were first engendered, and it is with your smiling
happy hamlets my brightest reminiscences are intertwined.
And what transaction could better illustrate the mighty
changes your energies have wrought than the one in which
we are at this moment engaged? Standing, as we do, upon
this lofty platform, surrounded by those antique and his-
torical fortifications, so closely connected with the infant
fortunes of the colony, one cannot help contrasting the
942 IRISH LITERATURE.
present scene with others of an analogous character which
have been frequently enacted upon the very spot. The
early Governors of Canada have often received in Quebec
deputies from the very districts from which each of you
have come, but in those days the sites now occupied by
your prosperous towns, the fields you till, the rose-clad
bowers, and trim lawns where your children sport in peace,
were then dense wildernesses of primeval forest, and those
who came from thence on an errand here were merciless
savages, seeking the presence of the viceroy either to
threaten war and vengeance, or at best to proffer a treach-
erous and uncertain peace. How. little could Montmagny,
or Tracy, or Vaudreuil, or Frontenac, have ever imagined
on such occasions that for the lank dusky forms of the
Iroquois or Ottawa emissaries, would one day be substi-
tuted the beaming countenances and burly proportions of
English-speaking mayors and aldermen and reeves. And
now, gentlemen, again good-bye. I cannot tell you how
deeply I regret that Lady Dufferin should not be present
to share the gratification I have experienced by your visit.
Tell your friends at home how deeply I have been moved
by this last and signal proof of their good-will, that their
kindness shall never be forgotten, and that as long as I
live it will be one of the chief ambitions of my life to ren-
der them faithful and effectual service.
AN ICELANDIC DINNER.
From ‘ Letters from High Latitudes.’
Yesterday—no—the day before—in fact I forget the
date of the day—I don’t believe it had one—all I know is,
I have not been in bed since,—we dined at the Governor’s;
—though dinner is too modest a term to apply to the enter-
tainment.
The invitation was for four o’clock, and at half-past
three we pulled ashore in the gig; I, innocent that I was,
in a well-fitting white waistcoat.
The Government House, like all the others, is built of
wood, on the top of a hillock; the only accession of dignity
it can boast being a little bit of mangy kitchen-garden that
LORD DUFFERIN. 943
hangs down in front to the road, like a soiled apron. There
was no lock, handle, bell, or knocker to the door, but imme-
diately on our approach a servant presented himself, and
ushered us into the room where Count Trampe was wait-
ing to welcome us. After having been presented to his wife
we proceeded to shake hands with the other guests, most
of whom I already knew; and I was glad to find that, at
all events in Iceland, people do not consider it necessary
to pass the ten minutes which precede the announcement
of dinner as if they had assembled to assist at the opening
of their entertainer’s will, instead of his oysters.
The company consisted of the chief dignitaries of the
island, including the bishop, the chief-justice, etc., etc.,
some of them in uniform, and all with holiday faces. As
soon as the door was opened Count Trampe tucked me
under his arm—two other gentlemen did the same to my
two companions—and we streamed into the dining-room.
The table was very prettily arranged with flowers, plate,
and a forest of glasses. Fitzgerald and I were placed on
either side of our host, the other guests, in due order, be-
yond. On my left sat the rector, and opposite, next to Fitz,
the chief physician of the island. Then began a series of
transactio: s of which I have no distinct recollection; in
fact, the events of the next five hours recur to me in as
great disarray as reappear the vestiges of a country that
has been disfigured by some deluge. . . .
I gather, then, from evidence—internal and otherwise—
that the dinner was excellent, and that we were helped in
Benjamite proportions; but as before the soup was finished
I was already hard at work hob-nobbing with my two
neighbors, it is not to be expected I should remember the
bill of fare.
With the peculiar manners used in Scandinavian skoal-
drinking I was already well acquainted. In the nice con-
duct of a wine-glass I knew that I excelled, and having
an hereditary horror of heel-taps, I prepared with a firm
heart to respond to the friendly provocations of my host.
I only wish you could have seen how his kind face beamed
with approval when I chinked my first bumper against his,
and having emptied it at a draught, turned it towards him
bottom upwards with the orthodox twist. Soon, however,
things began to look more serious even than I had expected.
944 IRISH LITERATURE.
I knew well that to refuse a toast, or to half empty your
glass, was considered churlish. I had come determined to
accept my host’s hospitality as cordially as it was offered.
I was willing, at a pinch, to payer de ma personne; should
he not be content with seeing me at his table, I was ready,
if need were, to remain under it! but at the rate we were
then going it seemed probable this consummation would
take place before the second course: so, after having ex-
changed a dozen rounds of sherry and champagne with my
two neighbors, I pretended not to observe that my glass
had been refilled; and, like the sea-captain, who, slipping
from between his two opponents, left them to blaze away
at each other the long night through,—withdrew from the
combat.
But it would not do; with untasted bumpers and de-
jected faces they politely waited until I should give the
signal for a renewal of hostilities, as they well deserved
to be called. Then there came over me a horrid, wicked
feeling. What if I should endeavor to floor the Governor,
and so literally turn the tables on him! It is true I had
lived for five-and-twenty years without touching wine,—
but was not I my great-grandfather’s great-grandson, and
an Irish peer to boot! Were there not traditions, too,
on the other side of the house, of casks of claret brought
up into the dining-room, the door locked, and the key
thrown out of the window? With such antecedents to sus-
tain me, I ought to be able to hold my own against the
stanchest toper in Iceland! So, with a devil glittering in
my left eye, I winked defiance right and left, and away we
went at it again for another five-and-forty minutes. At
last their fire slackened: I had partially quelled both the
Governor and the rector, and still survived. It is true I
did not feel comfortable; but it was in the neighborhood
of my waistcoat, not my head, I suffered. “I am not well,
but I will not out,” I soliloquized, with Lepidus—“ give
me the wing,” I would have added, had I dared. Still the
neck of the banquet was broken—Fitzgerald’s chair was
not yet empty,—could we hold out perhaps a quarter of an
hour longer our reputation was established; guess then my
horror, when the Icelandic doctor, shouting his favorite
dogma by way of battle cry, “Si trigintis guttis, morbum
curare velis, erras,” gave the signal for an unexpected on-
LORD DUFFERIN. 945
slaught, and the twenty guests poured down on me in suc-
cession. I really thought I should have run away from
the house; but the true family blood, I suppose, began to
show itself, and, with a calmness almost frightful, I re-
ceived them one by one.
After this began the public toasts.
Although up to this time I had kept a certain portion of
my wits about me, the subsequent hours of the entertain-
ment became henceforth enveloped in a dreamy mystery.
I can perfectly recall the look of the sheaf of glasses that
stood before me, six in number; I could draw the pattern
of each: I remember feeling a lazy wonder they should al-
ways be full, though I did nothing but empty them,—and
at last solved the phenomenon by concluding I had become
a kind of Danaid, whose punishment, not whose sentence,
had been reversed: then suddenly I felt as if I were dis-
embodied,—a distant spectator of my own performances,
and of the feast at which my person remained seated. The
voices of my host, of the rector, of the chief-justice, became
thin and low, as though they reached me through a whis-
pering tube; and when I rose to speak it was as to an au-
dience in another sphere, and in a language of another
state of being: yet, however unintelligible to myself, I must
have been in some sort understood, for at the end of each
sentence cheers, faint as the roar of waters on a far-off
strand, floated towards me; and if I am to believe a report
of the proceedings subsequently shown us, I must have be-
come polyglot in my cups. According to that report it
seems the Governor threw off (I wonder he did not do
something else), with the queen’s health in French, to
which I responded in the same language. Then the rector,
in English, proposed my health,—under the circumstances
a cruel mockery,—but to which, ill as I was, I responded
very gallantly by drinking to the beaux yeue of the Count-
ess. Then somebody else drank success to Great Britain,
and I see it was followed by really a very learned discourse
by Lord D. in honor of the ancient Icelanders; during
which he alluded to their discovery of America, and Co-
lumbus’ visit. Then came a couple of speeches in Ice-
landic, after which the bishop, in a magnificent Latin ora-
tion of some twenty minutes, a second time proposes my
health; to which, utterly at my wits’ end, I had the au-
60
946 IRISH LITERATURE.
dacity to reply in the same language. As it is fit so great
an effort of oratory should not perish, I send you some of
its choicest specimens :—
“Viri illustres,” I began, “insolitus ut sum ad pub-
licum loquendum, ego propero respondere ad complimen-
tum quod recte reverendus prelaticus mihi fecit, in pro-
ponendo meam salutem: et supplico vos credere quod
multum gratificatus et flattificatus sum honore tam dis-
tincto.
“Bibere, viri illustres, res est, que in omnibus terris,
‘domum venit ad hominum negotia et pectora:’? (1) re-
quirit ‘haustum longum, haustum fortem, et haustum
omnes simul:’ (2) ut canit poeta, ‘unum tactum Nature
totum orbem facit consanguineum,’(3) et hominis natura
est—bibere(4).
“Viri illustres, alterum est sentimentum equaliter uni-
versale: terra communis super quam septentrionales et
meridionales, eádem enthusiasm& convenire possunt: est
necesse quod id nominarem? Ad pulchram sexum devotio!
“¢Amor regit palatium, castra, lucum.’(5) Dubito
sub quo capite vestram jucundam civitatem numerare de-
beam. Palatium? non regem! castra? non milites! lucum?
non ullam arborem habetis! Tamen Cupido vos dominat
haud aliter quam alios—et virginum Islandarum pul-
chritudo per omnes regiones cognita est.
“Bibamus salutem earum, et confusionem ad omnes
bacularios: speramus quod ex care et benedict creature
invenient tot maritos quot velint,—qudd geminos quottanis
habeant, et quod earum filiz, maternum exemplum sequen-
tes, gentem Islandicam perpetuent in secula seculorum.”
The last words mechanically rolled out, in the same “ ore
rotundo” with which the poor old Dean of Christchurch
used to finish his Gloria, etc., in the cathedral.
Then followed more speeches,—a great chinking of
1 As the happiness of these quotations seemed to luce a very pleasin;
effect on my auditors, Isubjoin a translation of im for the benefit oi
the unlearned :—
1. “ Comes home to men’s business and bosoms.”—Paterfamilias, Times.
3. “A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together.”—Neleon at the
Nile.
8. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”—Jeremy Bentham,
4 Apothesm by the late Lord Mountcoffeehouse.
6. ‘Love rules the court, the camp, the grove.”— Venerable Bede.
LORD DUFFERIN. . 947
glasses,—a Babel of conversation,—a kind of dance round
the table, where we successively gave each alternate hand,
as in the last figure of the Lancers,—a hearty embrace
from the Governor,—and finally—silence, daylight, and
fresh air, as we stumbled forth into the street.
THOMAS DUFFET.
(Flourished about 1676.)
Taomas DUFFET “flourished in the seventeenth contury ac-
cording to Lempriére’s Universal Biography. Beyond this little is
known except that he was an Irishman who kept a milliner’s shop in
the New Exchange, London, and was a writer of burlesques and
songs. As a song-writer he is now best remembered. His songs
are delightful of their kind, an artificial kind to be sure, but his was
an age of artificialities. Something of the delicate unreal grace,—
as of a duchess playing at milkmaid with a Dresden-China petticoat
all nosegays and true-lover knots,—which gave its most exquisite
inspiration to Purcell and Arne, is to be found in the songs of the
accomplished ex-man-milliner ; something, too, of the gay and cold
sparkle of Pope is in his praises of Celia.
That Duffet’s burlesques of Dryden and Shadwell and others were
successful, even the editors of ‘ Biographia Dramatica’ acknowledge,
but they declare that for the favorable reception they found Mr.
Duffet stood more indebted to the great names of those authors
whose works he attempted to burlesque and ridicule than to any
merit of his own.” Of these burlesques six are at present known :
‘The Amorous Old Woman’ (doubtful), ‘Spanish Rogue,’ ‘ Empress
of Morocco,’ ‘Mock Tempest,’ ‘Beauty’s Triumph,’ and ‘ Psyche
Debauched.’
COME ALL YOU PALE LOVERS.
Come all you pale lovers that sigh and complain,
While your beautiful tyrants but laugh at your pain,
Come practice with me
To be happy and free,
In spite of inconstancy, pride, or disdain.
1 see and I love, and the bliss I enjoy
No rival can lessen nor envy destroy.
My mistress so fair is, no language or art
Can describe her perfection in every part;
Her mien ’s so genteel,
With such ease she can kill,
Each look with new passion she captures my heart.
Her smiles, the kind message of love from her eyes,
When she frowns ’t is from others her flame to disguise.
Thus her scorn or her spite
I convert to delight,
‘As the bee gathers honey wherever he flies.
948
THOMAS DUFFET. 949
My vows she receives from her lover unknown,
And I fancy kind answers although I have none.
How blest should I be
If our hearts did agree,
Since already I find so much pleasure alone.
I see and I love, and the bliss I enjoy
No rival can lessen nor envy destroy.
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.
(1816—1908.)
CHABRLES Gavan Durry was born in Monaghan in 1816. He was
educated in that town, and he had, at an early age, to rely on his own
energies. He was but a lad when he went to Dublin and obtained
employment as sub-editor on The Dublin Morning Register. He re-
turned soon afterward to his native north as the editor of a paper
of considerable influence in Belfast. Once more he turned his face
to the metropolis, and obtained an engagement on The Mountain,
an O'Connell organ.
It was not till 1842, however, that his career could be said to have
really begun. In that year he, in conjunction with Thomas Davis
and John B. Dillon, founded The Nation. The memoirs we give of
several Irishmen—orators, poets, and prose writers—will bring home
to the reader a sense of the enormous significance of this event in
the literary and political world of Ireland.
Duffy's new journal attracted to it all the young talent of the
country, and there grew up a literature which challenges favorable
comparison with that of any other period of Irish history. Duffy
was soon brought face to face with the difficulties which lay in the
path of a journalist of anti-governmental politics ; in 1844 he was
tried with O'Connell, was defended by Whiteside, and was found
guilty. The verdict was quashed on an appeal to the House of
Lore
Soon after this a breach took place between O'Connell and the
Young Ireland party. Duffy was one of the founders of the Irish
Confederation, which the more ardent section set up in opposition
to O'Connell's ific organization. When the troublous days of
1848 came, Duffy had to pass through the same trials as his com-
panions; The Nation was supp! ; he himself was arrested, and
only released after the Government four times attempted, and four
times failed, to obtain a conviction.
And now he began life again, resuscitated The Nation, and
preached the modified gospel of constitutional agitation. He also
ad a share in founding a Parliamentary party, having been elected
for New Ross in 1852. The object of this party was to obtain legis-
lative reforms, especially for the cultivators of the soil ; and one of
its principles was to hold aloof from both the English parties. The
defection of Justice Keogh and others drove several of the ‘‘ Inde-
pendent opposition” party, as it was called, to despair, and de-
stroyed for the moment all confidence in Parliamentary agitation.
, being one among those who had abandoned hope, left Ireland
to seek brighter fortupes and more promising work in another land.
He soon found employment for his' talents in Australia : he had
left Ireland in 1856, and in 1857 was Minister of Public Works in
Victoria. That office he held twice afterward, and in 1871 he at-
tained to the still higher position of Prime Minister of the colony.
Being defeated in Parliament, he demanded the right to dissolve ;
950
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 951
but Viscount Canterbury, for reasons which were at the time the
subject of hot controversy, declined to accede to the uest, and
Duffy had to resign. He was offered knighthood, which he at first
refused, but ultimately accepted in May, 1873. In 1876 he was
elected Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. After his departure
from Ireland he paid two visits of some duration to Europe, and on
his retirement in 1880 he went to live at Nice, where he recorded in
volumes as fascinating as instructive the history of the Irish move-
ments with which he had been connected. He died in 1903.
Sir Charles Duffy was a writer of vigorous prose and an effec-
tive orator. His poems are few in number. veral of them are
strong and slashing and warlike. There are others in sweeter vein;
but allalike bear the stamp of the true poet. His publications are
‘The Ballad Poetry of Ireland,’ 1845 (fifty editions) ; ‘ Young Ire-
land,’ ‘ A Fragment of Irish History,’ ‘ Conversations with Carlyle,’
“The League of North and South,’ ‘The Life of Thomas Davis,’
‘ Bird’s Eye View of Irish History,’ ‘My Life in Two Hemispheres.’
He was President of the Irish Literary Society of London.
A DISPUTE WITH CARLYLE.
From ‘ Conversations with Carlyle.’
In all our intercourse for more than a generation I had
only one quarrel with Carlyle, which occurred about this
time, and I wish to record it, because, in my opinion, he
behaved generously and even magnanimously. Comment-
ing on some transaction of the day, I spoke with indigna-
tion of the treatment of Ireland by her stronger sister.
Carlyle replied that if he must say the whole truth, it was
his opinion that Ireland had brought all her misfortunes
on herself. She had committed a great sin in refusing and
resisting the Reformation. In England, and especially in
Scotland, certain men who had grown altogether intoler-
ant of the condition of the world arose and swore that this
thing should not continue, though the earth and the devil
united to uphold it; and their vehement protest was heard
by the whole universe, and whatever had been done for
human liberty from that time forth, in the English Com-
monwealth, in the French Revolution, and the like, was
the product of this protest.
It was a great sin for nations to darken their eyes
against light like this, and Ireland, which had persistently
done so, was punished accordingly. It was hard to say
how far England was blamable in trying by trenchant laws
952 IRISH LITERATURE.
to compel her into the right course, till in later times it
was found the attempt was wholly useless, and then prop-
erly given up. He found, and any one might see who
looked into the matter a little, that countries had prospered
or fallen into helpless ruin in exact proportion as they had
helped or resisted this message. The most peaceful, hope-
ful nations in the world just now were the descendants of
the men who had said, “ Away with all your trash; we will
believe in none of it; we scorn your threats of damnation;
on the whole we prefer going down to hell with a true story
in our mouths to gaining heaven by any holy legerdemain.”
Ireland refused to believe and must take the consequences,
one of which, he would venture to point out, was a popula-
tion preternaturally ignorant and lazy.
I was very angry, and I replied vehemently that the
upshot of his homily was that Ireland was rightly tram-
pled upon, and plundered for three centuries, for not
believing in the Thirty-nine Articles; but did he believe in
a tittle of them himself? If he did believe them, what was
the meaning of his exhortations to get rid of Hebrew old
clothes, and put off Hebrew spectacles? If he did not
believe them, it seemed to me that he might, on his own
showing, be trampled upon, and robbed as properly as
Ireland for rejecting what he called the manifest truth.
Queen Elizabeth, or her father, or any of the Englishmen
or Scotchmen who rose for the deliverance of the world,
and so forth, would have made as short work of him as
they did of popish recusants. Ireland was ignorant, he
said, but did he take the trouble of considering that for
three generations to seek education was an offense strictly
prohibited and punished by law? Down to the time of the
Reform Act, and the coming into power of the Reformers,
the only education tendered to the Irish people was mixed
with the soot of hypocrisy and profanation. When I was
a boy, in search of education, there was not in a whole
province, where the successors of these English and Scotch
prophets had had their own way, a single school for
Catholic boys above the condition of a Poor School.
My guardian had to determine whether I should do with-
out education, or seek it in a Protestant school, where I was
regarded as an intruder,—not an agreeable experiment in
the province of Ulster, I could assure him. This was what
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 953
I, for my part, owed to these missionaries of light and
civilization. The Irish people were lazy, he said, taking
no account of the fact that the fruits of their labor were
not protected by law, but left a prey to their landlords,
who plundered them without shame or mercy. Peasants
were not industrious, under such conditions, nor would
philosophers be for that matter, I fancied. If the people
of Ireland found the doctrines of the Reformation incred-
ible three hundred years ago, why were they not as well
entitled to reject them then as he was to reject them to-
day? In my opinion they were better entitled. A nation
which had been the school of the West, a people who had
sent missionaries throughout Europe to win barbarous
races to Christianity, who interpreted in its obvious sense
God’s promise to be always with his Church, suddenly
heard that a king of unbridled and unlawful passions
undertook to modify the laws of God for his own conven-
ience, and that his ministers and courtiers were bribed into
acquiescence by the plunder of monasteries and churches:
what wonder that they declared that they would die rather
than be partners in such a transaction. It might be worth
remembering that the pretensions of Anne Boleyn’s hus-
band to found a new religion seemed as absurd and profane
to these Irishmen as the similar pretensions of Joe Smith
seemed to all of us at present. After all they had endured,
the people of Ireland might compare with any in the world
for the only virtues they were permitted to cultivate: piety,
chastity, simplicity, hospitality to the stranger, fidelity to
- friends, and the magnanimity of self-sacrifice for truth
and justice. When we were touring in Ireland together
twenty years before, with the phenomena under our eyes,
he himself declared that after a trial of three centuries
there was more vitality in Catholicism than in this saving
light to which the people had blinded their eyes.
Mrs. Carlyle and John Forster, who were present, looked
at each other in consternation, as if a catastrophe were
imminent; but Carlyle replied placidly, “ That there was
no great life, he apprehended, in either of these systems at
present; men looked to something quite different to that
for their guidance just now.”
I could not refrain from returning to the subject. Coun-
tries which had refused to relinquish their faith were less
954 IRISH LITERATURE.
prosperous, he insisted, than those who placidly followed
the reval Reformers in Germany and England. Perhaps
they were; but worldly prosperity was the last test I ex-
pected to hear him apply to the merits of a people. If
this was to be a test, the Jews left the Reformers a long
way in the rear.
When nations were habitually peaceful and prosperous,
he replied, it might be inferred that they dealt honestly
with the rest of mankind, for this was the necessary basis
of any prosperity that was not altogether ephemeral; and,
as conduct was the fruit of conviction, it might be further
inferred, with perfect safety, that they had had honest
teaching, which was the manifest fact in the cases he speci-
fied.
I was much heated, and I took myself off as soon as I
could discreetly do so. The same evening I met Carlyle at
dinner at John Forster’s; I sat beside him and had a
pleasant talk, and neither then nor at any future time
did he resent my brusque criticism by the slightest sign of
displeasure. This is a fact, I think, which a generous
reader will recognize to be altogether incompatible with
the recent estimate of Carlyle as a man of impatient tem-
per and arrogant, overbearing self-will.
THE MUSTER OF THE NORTH.
“We deny and have always denied the alleged massacre of 1641. But
that the people rose under their chiefs, seized the English towns and ex-
pelled the English settlers, and in doing so committed many excesses, is
undeniable—as is equally their d rate provocation. The ballad here
printed is not meant as an apology for these excesses, which we condemn
and lament, but as a true representation of the feelings of the insurgents
in the first madness of success.”—Author’s note.
Joy! joy! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride—
And see! our crackling bonfires light old Bann’s rejoicing tide,
And gladsome bell and buglehorn from Newry’s captured
towers,
Hark! how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours—is
ours!
Glory to God! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of Down,
My ears have drunk the joyful news, “Stout Phelim hath his
own.”
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 966
Oh! may they see and hear no more!—oh! may they rot to
clay !— :
When they forget to triumph in the conquest of to-day.
Now, now we’ll teach the shameless Scot to purge his thievish
maw;
Now, now the court may fall to pray, for Justice is the Law;
Now shall the Undertaker! square, for once, his loose ac-
counts—
We'll strike, brave boys, a fair result, from all his false
amounts.
Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal
spawn,
Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and
their lawn,
With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own;
And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne.
Our standard flies o’er fifty towers, o’er twice ten thousand
men;
Down have we plucked the pirate Red, never to rise again;
The Green alone shall stream above our native field and flood—
The spotless Green, save where its folds are gemmed with
Saxon blood!
Pity!? no, no, you dare not, priest—not you, our Father, dare
Preach to us now that godless creed—the murderer’s blood to
spare;
To spare his blood, while tombless still our slaughtered kin im-
plore
“ Graves and revenge” from Gobbin cliffs and Carrick’s bloody
ore!
Pity! could we “ forget, forgive,” if we were clods of clay,
Our martyred priests, our banished chiefs, our race in dark
decay,
1The Scotch and English adventurers planted in Ulster by James I.
were called “ Undertakers.”
3Leland, the Protestant historian, states that the Catholic priests
“labored zealously to moderate the excesses of war,” and frequently pro-
tected the English by concealing them in their places of worship and even
under their altars.
* The scene of the massacre of the unoffending inhabitants of Island
Magee by the garrison of Carrickfergus.
956 IRISH LITERATURE.
And, worse than all—you know it, priest—the daughters of
our land”
With wrongs we blushed to name until the sword was in our
hand?
Pity! well, if you needs must whine, let pity have its way—
Pity for all our comrades true, far from our side to-day:
The prison-bound who rot in chains, the faithful dead who
poured
Their blood ’neath Temple’s lawless axe or Pargon’s ruffian
sword.
They smote us with the swearer’s oath and with the murderer’s
knife;
We in the open field will fight fairly for land and life;
But, by the dead and all their wrongs, and by our hopes to-day,
One of us twain shall fight their last, or be it we or they.
They banned our faith, they banned our lives, they trod us into
earth,
Until our very patience stirred their bitter hearts to mirth.
Even this great flame that wraps them now, not we but they
have bred:
Yes, this is their own work; and now their work be on their
head!
Nay, Father, tell us not of help from Leinster's Norman peers,
If we shall shape our holy cause to match their selfish fears—
Helpless and hopeless be their cause who brook a vain delay!
Our ship is launched, our flag’s afloat, whether they come or
stay.
Let silken Howth and savage Slane still kiss their tyrant’s
rod, .
And pale Dunsany still prefer his master to his God;
Little we’d miss their fathers’ sons, the Marchmen of the
Pale,
If Irish hearts and Irish hands had Spanish blade and mail!
Then let them stay to bow and fawn, or fight with cunning
words;
I fear no more their courtly arta than England's hireling
swords;
Nathless their creed, they hate us still, as the despoiler hates;
Could they love us, and love their prey, our kinsmen’s lost
estates?
THE TREATY STONE. LIMERICK
From a photograph
‘The treaty of Limerick, which followed the siege of
Derry, the battle of the Boyne, the defence of the Lim-
erick, and the battles of Athlone and Aughrim, was signed
in 1691; and this picture shows the stone on which it
was signed. ‘The infamous ignoring of this treaty by the
conqueror was a violation of plighted honor which has
done more than any one event to keep alive Irish hatred
and distrust of England, See a “Glimpse at Ireland's
History,” in Vol. IX. of Tris LITERATURE.
varies Google
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 957
Our rude array ’s a jagged rock to smash the spoiler’s power—
Or, need we aid, His aid we have who doomed this gracious
hour;
Of yore He led His Hebrew host to peace through strife and
pain,
And us He leads the self-same path the self-same goal to gain.
Down from the sacred hills whereon a saint! communed with
God,
Up from the vale where Bagenal’s blood manured the reeking
80
Out from the stately woods of Truagh M’Kenna’s plundered
home,
Like Malin’s waves, as fierce and fast, our faithful clansmen
come.
Then, brethren, on! O’Neill’s dear shade would frown to see
you pause—
Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, is watching o’er your
cause—
His generous error lost the land—he deemed the Norman true;
Oh, forward, friends, it must not lose the land again in you!
THE IRISH RAPPAREES.
A PEASANT BALLAD.
“When Limerick was surrendered and the bulk of the Irish army took
service with Louis XIV., a multitude of the old soldiers of the e,
Aughrim, and Limerick, preferred remaining in the country at the risk of
fighting for their daily bread; and with them some gentlemen, loath to
pert from their estates or their sweethearts. The English army and the
inglish law drove them by degrees to the hills, where they were long a
terror to the new and old settlers from England, and a secret pride and
comfort to the trampled peasantry, who loved them even for their excesses.
It was all they had left to take pride in.”—Author’s note.
Righ Shemus he has gone to France and left his crown be-
hind :—
Tll-luck be theirs, both day and night, put runnin’ in his mind!
Lord Lucan? followed after, with his slashers brave and true,
18t. Patrick, whose favorite retreat was Lecale, in the County Down.
3 After the Treaty of Limerick, Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, sailed
with the Brigade to France, and was killed while leading his countrymen
to victory at the battle of Landen, in the Low Countries, July 29, 1693.
958 IRISH LITERATURE.
red the doleful keen is raised—“ What will poor Ireland
io
“What must poor Ireland do?
Our luck, they say, has gone to France. What can poor Ireland
do?”
Oh, never fear for Ireland, for she has so’gers still,
For Remy’s boys are in the wood, and Rory’s on the hill;
And never had poor Ireland more loyal hearts than these—
May God be kind and good to them, the faithful Rapparees!
The fearless Rapparees!
The jewel waar ye, Rory, with your Irish Rapparees!
Oh, black ’s your heart, Clan Oliver, and coulder than the clay!
Oh high ’s your head, Clan Sassenach, since Sarsfield ’s gone
away!
It’s little love you bear to us for sake of long ago—
But howld your hand, for Ireland still can strike a deadly
blow—
Can strike a mortal blow—
Och! dar-a-Chriost! ’t is she that still could strike the deadly
blow!
The master’s bawn, the master’s seat, a surly bodach 1 fills;
The master’s son, an outlawed man, is riding on the hills;
But, God be praised, that round him throng, as thick as summer
bees,
The swords that guarded Limerick walls—his faithful Rap-
parees!
His lovin’ Rapparees!
Who daar say, “ No” to Rory Oge, who heads the Rapparees!
Black Billy Grimes, of Latnamard, he racked us long and sore—
God rest the faithful hearts he broke; we’ll never see them
more!
But III go bail he 11 break no more while Truagh has gallows-
trees,
For why? he met one lonesome night the awful Rapparees!
The angry Rapparees!
They never sin no more, my boys, who cross the Rapparees.
Now, Sassenach and Cromweller, take heed of what I say—
Keep down your black and angry looks that scorn us night and
day;
For there 's a just and wrathful Judge that every action sees,
1 Bodach, a severe, inhospitable man ; a churl.
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 959
And He’ll make strong, to right our wrong, the faithful Rap-
parees!
The fearless Rapparees!
The men that rode at Sarsfield’s side, the changeless Rap-
parees!
THE IRISH CHIEFS.
Oh! to have lived like an Inisa Carer, when hearts were fresh
and true,
And a manly thought, like a pealing bell, would quicken them
through and through;
And the seed of a generous hope right soon to a fiery action
W
And nen ‘would have scorned to talk and talk, and never a deed
to do.
Oh! the iron grasp,
And the kindly clasp,
And the laugh so fond and gay;
And the roaring board,
And the ready sword,
Were the types of that vanished day.
Oh! to have lived as Brian lived, and to die as Brian died;
His land to win with the sword, and smile, as a warrior wins
his bride.
To knit its force in a kingly host, and rule it with kingly pride,
Mas the girt of its guardian swords over victor fields
o ride;
And when age was past,
And when death came fast,
To look with a softened eye
On a happy race
Who had loved his face,
And to die as a king should die.
Oh! to have lived dear Owen’s life—to live for a solemn end, .
To strive for the ruling strength and skill God’s saints to the
Chosen send;
And to come at length with that holy strength, the bondage of
fraud to rend,
And pour the light of God’s freedom in where Tyrants and
Slaves were denned;
And to bear the brand
With an equal hand,
Like a soldier of Truth and Right,
960 IRISH LITERATURE.
And, oh! Saints, to die,
While our flag flew high,
Nor to look on its fall or flight.
Oh! to have lived as Grattan lived, in the glow of his manly
years,
To thunder again those iron words that thrill like the clash of
spears ;
Once more to blend for a holy end, our peasants, and priests,
and peers,
Till England raged, like a baffled fiend, at the tramp of our.
Volunteers.
And, oh! best of all,
Far rather to fall
(With a blesseder fate than he,)
On a conquering field,
Than one right to yield,
Of the Island so proud and free!
Yet scorn to cry on the days of old, when hearts were fresh and
true,
If hearts be weak, oh! chiefly then the Missioned their work
must do;
Nor wants our day its own fit way, the want is in you and you;
For fhese eyes have seen as kingly a King as ever dear Erin
ew.
And with Brian’s will,
And with Owen’s skill,
And with glorious Grattan’s love,
He had freed us soon—
But death darkened his noon,
And he sits with the saints above.
Oh! could you live as Davis lived—kind Heaven be his bed!
With an eye to guide, and a hand to rule, and a calm and kingly
head.
And a heart from whence, like a Holy Well, the soul of his land
was fed,
No need to cry on the days of old that your holiest hope be
sped.
Then scorn to pray
For a by-past day—
The whine of the sightless dumb!
To the true and wise
Let a king arise,
And a holier day is come!
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 961
INNISHOWEN.
God bless the gray mountains of dark Donegal,
God bless Royal Aileach, the pride of them all;
For she sits evermore like a queen on her throne,
And smiles on the valley of Green Innishowen.
And fair are the valleys of Green Innishowen,
And hardy the fishers that call them their own—
A race that nor traitor nor coward have known
Enjoy the fair valleys of Green Innishowen.
Oh! simple and bold are the bosoms they bear,
Like the hills that with silence and nature they share;
For our God, who hath planted their home near his own,
Breathed His spirit abroad upon fair Innishowen.
Then praise to our Father for wild Innishowen,
Where fiercely for ever the surges are thrown—
Nor weather nor fortune a tempest hath blown
Could shake the strong bosoms of brave Innishowen.
Bee the bountiful Couldah 1 careering along—
A type of their manhood so stately and strong—
On the weary for ever its tide is bestown,
So they share with the stranger in fair Innishowen.
God guard the kind homesteads of fair Innishowen.
Which manhood and virtue have chos’n for their own;
Not long shall that nation in slavery groan,
That rears the tall peasants of fair Innishowen.
Like that oak of St. Bride which nor Devil nor Dane,
Nor Saxon nor Dutchman could rend from her fane,
They have clung by the creed and the cause of their own
Through the midnight of danger in true Innishowen.
Then shout for the glories of old Innishowen,
The stronghold that foemen have never o’erthrown—
The soul and the spirit, the blood and the bone,
That guard the green valleys of true Innishowen.
No purer of old was the tongue of the Gael,
When the charging aboo made the foreigner guail;
When it gladdens the stranger in welcome’s soft tone.
In the home-loving cabins of kind Innishowen,
Oh! flourish, ye homesteads of kind Innishowen,
Where seeds of a people’s redemption are sown;
Right soon shall the fruit of that sowing have grown,
To bless the kind homesteads of green Innishowen.
a Goudan, Culdaf’, the chief river in the Innishowen mountains,
962 IRISH LITERATURE.
When they tell us the tale of a spell-stricken band,
All entranced, with their bridles and broadswords in hand,
Who await but the word to give Erin her own,
They can read you that riddle in proud Innishowen.
Hurra for the Spsemen ! of proud Innishowen !—
Long live the wild Seers of stout Innishowen !—
May Mary, our mother, be deaf to their moan
Who love not the promise of proud Innishowen!
1 Spemen, an Ulster and Scotch term signifying a person gifted with
“geoond sight ”"—a prophet.
EARL OF DUNRAVEN.
(1841 —)
VWINDHAM THOMAS WynpHam-Quin, the fourth Earl of Dunraven
and Mount-Earl, was born in 1841, and succeeded to the title in 1871.
He was educated at Oxford and went into the army.. Before his
father’s death, while Viscount Adare, he devoted himself to literary
pursuits, and gained a good deal of the experience afforded by the
discharge of the varied and adventurous duties of special corre-
ndent. In this capacity he served the London Daily Telegraph
throughout the Abyssinian campaign and the Franco-Prussian war,
and his letters contained some of the most graphic descriptions that
appeared oven in that journal of graphic writing during those excit-
in ri ..
io mada & tour through the then less frequented parts of the
United States, and the result of his observations was given to the
world in a book entitled ‘ The Great Divide,’ a work which abounds
in brilliant descriptions. He also wrote ‘The Upper Yellowstone’
(1874); ' The Irish Question ’ (1880); ‘The Soudan: Its History, Geog-
raphy, and Characteristics’ (1884); and ‘The Theory and Practice
of Navigation’ (1900). He is an ardent yachtsman and twice built
a yacht to compete for the America Cup.
A CITY IN THE GREAT WEST.
From ‘The Great Divide.’
Virginia City. Good Lord! What a name for the place!
We had looked forward to it during the journey as to a
sort of haven of rest, a lap of luxury; a Capua in which to
forget our woes and weariness; an Elysium where we
might be washed, clean-shirted, rubbed, shampooed, bar-
bered, curled, cooled, and cocktailed. Not a bit of it!
Not a sign of Capua about the place! There might have
been laps, but there was no luxury. A street of straggling
shanties, a bank, a blacksmith’s shop, a few dry-goods
stores, and bar-rooms, constitute the main attractions of
the “city.” A gentleman had informed me that Virginia
city contained brown stone-front houses and paved streets,
equal, he guessed, to any Eastern town. How that man
did lie in his Wellingtons! The whole place was a delusion,
and a snare. One of the party was especially mortified,
for he had been provided with a letter of introduction to
some ladies, from whose society he anticipated great pleas-
963
964 IRISH LITERATURE.
ure; but when he came to inquire, he found, to his intense
disgust, that they were in Virginia City, Nevada, “ten
thousand miles away!” However, we soon became recon-
ciled to our fate. We found the little inn very clean and
comfortable; we dined on deer, antelope, and bear meat,
a fact which raised hopes of hunting in our bosoms; and
the people were exceedingly civil, kind, obliging, and
anxious to assist strangers in any possible way, as, so far
as my experience goes of America, and indeed of all coun-
tries, they invariably are as soon as you get off the regular
lines of travel.
Virginia City is situated on Alder Gulch. It is sur-
rounded by a dreary country, resembling the more desolate
parts of Cumberland, and consisting of interminable
waves of steep low hills, covered with short, withered
‘grass. I went out for a walk on the afternoon of our ar-
rival, and was most disagreeably impressed. I could not
get to the top of anything, and consequently could obtain
no extended view. I kept continually climbing to the sum-
mit of grassy hills, only to find other hills, grassier and
higher, surrounding me on all sides. The wind swept howl-
ing down the combes, and whistled shrilly in the short wiry
herbage; large masses of ragged-edged black clouds were
piled up against a leaden sky; not a sign of man or beast
was to be seen. It began to snow heavily, and I was glad
to turn my back to the storm and scud for home.
Alder Gulch produced at one time some of the richest
placer workings of the continent. It was discovered in
1863, and about thirty millions of dollars’ worth of gold
have been won from it. Of late years very little has
been done, and at present the industrious Chinaman alone
pursues the business of rewashing the old dirt heaps, and
making money where any one else would starve. In truth,
he is a great washerwoman is your Chinaman, equally suc-
cessful with rotten quartz and dirty shirts. Alder Gulch
is about twelve miles in length, and half a mile broad. It
is closed at the head by a remarkable limestone ridge, the
highest point of which is known as “ Old Baldy Mountain,”
and it leads into the Jefferson Fork of the Missouri.
Along the sides of the valley may be seen many patches of
black basalt, and the bottom is covered entirely by drift,
composed of material weather and water worn out of met-
EARL OF DUNRAVEN. 965
amorphic rocks, the fragments varying in size from large
bowlders to fine sand and gravel. In this drift the float
gold is found.
In Montana the deposits of the precious metal generally
occur in metamorphic rocks, belonging probably to the
Huronian or Laurentian series. These are clearly strati-
fied, not unfrequently intercalated with bands of clay or
sand, and underlie the whole country, forming beds of
great thickness, very massive and close-grained in their
lower layers, but growing softer and looser in texture to-
wards the surface. The superimposed formations, carbon-
iferous limestones and others, appear to have been almost
wholly removed by erosion.
In this part of Montana, indeed, the forces of erosion
must have acted with great vigor for a long period of time.
The general character of the country where placer mines
exist may be said to be a series of deep gulches, frequently
dry in the height of summer, but carrying foaming torrents
after heavy rains and in snow-melting time, leading at
right angles into a principal valley, and combining to form
a little river, or, as it would be locally called, a creek.
This principal stream courses in a broad valley through
the mountains for perhaps 60, 80, or 100 miles, and at
every two or three miles of its progress receives the waters
of a little tributary torrent, tearing through the strata in
deep cafions for ten or twelve miles, and searching the very
vitals of the hills. Down these gulches, cafions, and val-
leys are carried the yellow specks torn from their quartz
and felspar cradles, hurried downward by the melting
snow, and battered into powder by falling bowlders and
grinding rocks, till they sink in beds of worthless sand and
mud, there to lie in peace for ages amid the solitudes of
primeval forest and eternal snow.
Some fine day there comes along a dirty, disheveled, to-
bacco-chewing fellow—“ fossicker,” as they would say in
Australia, “prospector,” as he would be called in the
States. Impelled by a love of adventure, a passion for ex-
citement, a hatred of “ the town and its narrow ways,” and
of all and any of the steady wage-getting occupations of
life, he braves summer’s heat and winter’s cold, thirst and
starvation, hostile Indians and jealous whites; perhaps
paddling a tiny birch-bark canoe over unmapped, unheard-
966 IRISH LITERATURE.
of lakes, away to the far and misty North, or driving before
him over the plains and prairies of a more genial clime his
donkey or Indian pony, laden with the few necessaries that
supply all the wants of his precarious life—a little flour,
some tea and sugar tied up in a rag, a battered frying-pan
and tin cup, a shovel, axe, and rusty gun. Through un-
trodden wastes he wanders, self-dependent and alone,
thinking of the great spree he had the last time he was in
“settlements,” and dreaming of what a good time he will
enjoy when he gets back rich with the value of some lucky
find, till chance directs him to the Gulch.
After a rapid but keen survey, he thinks it is a likely-
looking place, capsizes the pack off his pony, leans lazily
upon his shovel, spits, and finally concludes to take a sam-
ple of the dirt. Listlessly, but with what delicacy of ma-
nipulation he handles the shovel, spilling over its edges the
water and lighter mud! See the look of interest that
wakens up his emotionless face as the residue of sediment
becomes less and less! Still more tenderly he moves the
circling pan, stooping anxiously to scan the few remaining
grains of fine sand.
A minute speck of yellow glitters in the sun; with an-
other dexterous turn of the wrist, two or three more golden
grains are exposed to view. He catches his breath; his
eyes glisten; his heart beats. Hurrah! He has found the
color! and “a d—d good color too.” It is all over with
your primeval forest now; not all the Indians this side of
Halifax or the other place could keep men out of that
gulch. In a short time claims are staked, tents erected,
shanties built, and “ Roaring Camp” is in full blast with
all its rowdyism, its shooting, gambling, drinking, and
blaspheming, and its under-current of charity, which never
will be credited by those who value substance less than
shadows, and think more of words than deeds.
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES.
‘Miss O’Conor Eootss is the fourth daughter of Alexander O'Conor
Eccles of Ballingarde House, County Roscommon. She was edu-
cated at Upton Hall, Birkenhead, and in Paris and Germany. She
wrote, under the pseudonym ‘‘ Hal Godfrey,” ‘ The Rejuvenation of
Miss Semaphore,’ a delightfully humorous book which has been
very successful, Her work, which is scattered over many period-
icals, is very extensive. The humorous and the pathetic are happily
mingled in her writings.
KING WILLIAM.
A CHRONICLE OF TOOMEVARA.
From The Pall Mall Gazette.
In Toomevara our political opinions are strong and well
defined, and we express them freely.
Such feuds, however, as that between Mrs. Macfarlane,
who kept the refreshment-room at the railway-station, and
Mr. James O’Brien, the station-master, were rare, since
usually Catholics and Protestants live on very neighborly
terms in our part of Ireland. They had taken a dislike to
each other from the first, and after-events served to inten-
sify it.
Mrs. Macfarlane was a tall, thin, and eminently respec-
table woman of fifty, possessed of many rigid virtues. She
was a native of the North of Ireland, and at the time our
story opens had been for two years proprietress of the
buffet, and made a decent living by it, for Toomevara is
situated on the Great Eastern and Western Railway, and a
fair amount of traffic passes through it.
The station-master, familiarly known as Jim O’Brien,
was Toomevara born, and had once been a porter on that
very line. He was an intelligent, easy-going, yet quick-
tempered man of pronounced Celtic type, with a round,
good-natured face, a humorous mouth, shrewd twinkling
eyes, and immense volubility. Between him and Mrs. Mac-
farlane the deadliest warfare raged. She was cold and
superior, and implacably in the right. She pointed out
dJim’s deficiencies whenever she saw them, and she saw
them very often. All day long she sat in her refreshment-
967
968 IRISH LITERATURE.
room, spectacles on nose, her Bible open before her, knit-
ting, and rising only at the entrance of a customer. Jim
had an uneasy consciousness that nothing escaped her eye,
and her critical remarks had more than once been reported.
to him.
“The bitther ould pill!” he said to his wife. “Why,
the very look av her "ud sour a crock o’ crame. She’s as
cross as a bag av weasels.”
Jim was a Catholic and a Nationalist. He belonged to
the “ Laygue,” and spoke at public meetings as often as his
duties allowed. He objected to being referred to by Mrs.
Macfarlane as a “ Papish ” and a “ Rebel.”
“ Papish, indeed!” said he. “ Ribbil, indeed! Tell the
woman to keep a civil tongue in her head, or ’t will be
“worse for her.”
“ How did the likes av her iver git a husban’? ” he would
ask distractedly, after a sparring match. “ Troth, an’ ’tis
no wonder the poor man died.”
Mrs. Macfarlane was full of fight and courage. Her
proudest boast was of being the granddaughter, daughter,
sister, and widow of Orangemen. The comparative luke-
warmness of Toomevara Protestants disgusted her. She
often told her intimates that in the little town where she
was born no Papist was allowed to settle. Every evening
the fife and drum band used in her childhood to march
through the streets playing “ Protestant Boys,” when the
inhabitants were expected to rush to their windows and
join in the chorus, unless there was a good excuse, such as
illness. Otherwise the windows were broken. She looked
on herself in Toomevara as a child of Israel among the
Babylonians, and felt that it behoved her to uphold the
standard of her faith. To this end she sang the praises
of the Battle of the Boyne with a triumph that aggravated
O’Brien to madness.
“ God Almighty help the woman! Is it Irish at all she
is—or what? To see her makin’ merry because a parcel 0’
rascally Dutchmen—— Sure, doesn’t she know ’t was
Trish blood they spilt at the Boyne? an’ to see her takin’
pride in it turns me sick, so it does. If she was English,
now, I could stand it; but she callin’ herself an Irish-
woman—faith, she has the bad dhrop in her, so she has, to
be glad at her counthry’s misforthunes.”
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 969
Jim’s rage was the greater because Mrs. Macfarlane,
whatever she said, said little or nothing to him. She
passed him by with lofty scorn and indifference, affecting
not to see him; and while she did many things that O’Brien
found extremely annoying, they were things strictly within
her rights.
Matters had not arrived at this pass all at once. The
feud dated from Mrs. Macfarlane’s having adopted a little
black dog, a mongrel, on which she lavished a wealth of
affection, and which—as the most endearing title she knew
—she had named “King William.” This, of course, was
nobody’s concern save Mrs. Macfarlane’s own, and in a
world of philosophers she would have been allowed to
amuse herself unheeded; but Jim O’Brien was not a phi-
losopher.
Unlike most Irishmen, he had a great love for flowers.
His garden was beautifully kept, and he was prouder of
his roses than anything on earth save his eldest daughter
Kitty, who was nearly sixteen. Picture, then, his rage and
dismay when he one day found his beds scratched into
holes, and his roses uprooted by “ King William,” who had
developed a perfect mania for hiding away bones under
Jim’s flowers. O’Brien made loud and angry complaints
to the dog’s owner, which she received with unconcern and
disbelief.
“ Please, Misther O’Brien,” she said with dignity, “ don’t
try to put it on the poor dog. Even if you do dislike his
name, that’s no reason for saying he was in your garden.
He knows better, so he does, than to go where he’s not
wanted.”
After this it was open war between the station-master
and the widow.
Jim, with many grumblings, invested in a roll of wire
netting, and spent a couple of days securing it to his
garden railings, Mrs. Macfarlane protesting the while that
she did not believe a word he had said, that he had trumped
up a charge just out of spite, that it was only what might
be expected from one of his kind, that for her part she had
always lived with gentry, and had no patience with low
agitators, and that she was quite sure it was his own chil-
dren, and none else, that he had to thank for the state of
970 IRISH LITERATURE.
his garden—if, indeed, there was anything wrong with it
at all, which she doubted.
Under the windows of the refreshment-room were two
narrow flower-beds. These Jim took care never to touch,
affecting to consider them the exclusive property of Mrs.
Macfarlane. They were long left uncultivated, an eyesore
to the station-master; but one day Kelly, the porter, came
to him with an air of mystery, to say that “ th’ ould wan”
—for by this term was Mrs. Macfarlane generally indi-
cated—“ was settin’ somethin’ in the beds beyant.”
Jim came out of his office, and walked up and down the
platform with an air of elaborate unconsciousness. Sure
enough, there was Mrs. Macfarlane gardening. She had
donned old gloves and a clean checked apron, and trowel
in hand was breaking up the caked earth, preparatory, it
would seem, to setting seeds.
“What the dickens is she doin’?” asked Jim, when he
got back.
“Not a wan av me knows,” said Kelly. “She’s been
grubbin’ there since tin o’clock.”
From this time Mrs. Macfarlane was assiduous in the
care of her two flower-beds. Every day she might be seen
weeding or watering, and though Jim steadily averted his
gaze, he was devoured by curiosity as to the probable re-
sults. What on earth did she want to grow? The weeks
passed. Tiny green seedlings at last pushed their way
through the soil, and in due course the nature of the plants
became evident. Jim was highly excited, and rushed home
to tell his wife.
“Be the Hokey, Mary,” he said, “’tis lilies she has
there; an’ may I never sin, but it’s my belief they’re
Orange lilies; an’ if they are, I’ll root ev’ry wan av thim
out, if I die forrit.”
“ Be quiet now,” said Mary, a pacific creature who spent
much of her time soothing her quick-tempered husband.
“Sure she wouldn't do the likes o’ that on ye. "Tis too
hasty y’ are, Jim. How d’ ye know they ’re lilies at all?
For the love o’ God keep her tongue off ye, an’ don’t be
puttin’ yersel’ in her way.”
“Whisht, woman, d’ ye think I’m a fool? Tis lilies
th’ are annyways, an’ time ’1I tell if they ’re Orange or no;
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 971
but faith, if th ’are, I won't sthand it. I'll complain to the
Boord.”
“Sure the Boord ll be on her side, man. They ’ll say
why shudden’t she have Orange lilies if she likes.”
“Ah, Mary, “tig too simple y’ are inthirely. Have ye
no sperrit, woman alive, to let her ride rough-shod over uz
this way? ‘Make a mouse o’ yerself an’ the cat’ll ate ye’
?g a thrue sayin’. Sure Saint Pether himself cudn’t sthand
it—an’ be the Piper that played before Moses, I won't.”
“Ye misforthunit man, don’t be dhrawin’ down ruc-
tions on yer head. Haven’t ye yer childher to think about?
An’ don’t be throublin’ yerself over what she does. "Tis
plazin’ her y’ are, whin she sees you’re mad. Take no no-
tice, man, an’ p’raps she ’ll shtop.”
“The divil fly away wid her for a bitther ould sarpint.
The vinom’s in her sure enough. Why should I put up wid
her, I'd like to know?”
“ Ah, keep yer tongue between yer teeth, Jim. ’T is too
onprudent y’ are. Not a worrd ye say but is brought back
to her by some wan. Have sinse, man. You’ll go sayin’
that to Joe Kelly, an’ he’ll have it over the town in no
time, an’ some wan ’ll carry it to her.”
“ An” do ye think I care a thrawneen’ for the likes av
her? Faith, not a pin. If you got yer way, Mary, ye’d
have me like the man that was hanged for sayin’ nothin’.
Sure I never did a hand’s turn agin her, an’ ’tis a mane
thrick av her to go settin’ Orange lilies over foreninst me,
an’ she knowin’ me opinions.”
“Faith, I'll not say it wasn’t, Jim, if they are Orange
lilies : but sure ye don’t know rightly yet what they are, an’
in God’s name keep quiet till ye do.”
Soothed somewhat by his wife, O’Brien recovered his
composure, and as at that moment Joe Kelly rang the sta-
tion bell, announcing that the eleven o’clock mail train
from Dublin was signaled, he hurried out to his duties.
The days went by. The lilies grew taller and taller.
They budded, they bloomed; and, sure enough, Jim had
been in the right—Orange lilies they proved to be.
“They ’ll make a fine show for the Twelfth of July, I’m
thinkin’,” said Mrs. Macfarlane complacently to Head
Constable Cullen, who had stopped “ to pass her the time
1 Thrawneen, a stem of grass.
972 IRISH LITERATURE.
o’ day,” as she walked by her beds, swinging a dripping
watering-pot.
“So they will, ma’am,” said the Constable; “so they
will. But what does Misther O’Brien say to them?”
“T’m sure I don’t know, an’ I don’t care,” replied Mrs.
Macfarlane loftily. “ I haven't consulted Misther O’Brien.
He’s nothin’ tu me.”
“ To be sure—to be sure; but bein’ Orange lilies, ye know,
an’ we have so few of them about here; and him bein’ such
an out-an’-out Nationalist, an’ a Catholic, I just thought
it might make a differ between yez.”
“ Aw’ if it does, it won't be the first. I’m proud tu differ
from the likes of him. You’ve no sperrit down here to
make a fellow like that a station-master, him that was a
common porter to start with; and as for his low opinions,
I scorn them—an ignorant, benighted, Papish rebel.”
“Come, come, ma’am: ’t was the Company made him
station-master, not uz. Jim isn’t a bad soort an’ you’re
givin’ him too hard names, so y’ are.”
“He’s a murtherin’ vagabone, like all his kind,” said
Mrs. Macfarlane with energy; “ an’ I’m surprised at yu,’
Head Constable, so I am—yu, a decent man, that has had
the benefit of the pure gospel, takin’ his part.”
“ But sure, ma’am, the Bible bids uz love our inimies.”
“ Bo it does, but it bids us have no part with evil-doers,
an’ woon text is as good as another, I’m thinkin’. Ah,
times is changed when a man like yu, wearin’ the Queen’s
uniform an’ all, can be found to wrest the Scriptures to the
advantage of a fellow like that.”
“Sure, ma’am, I’m for pace an’ concord. What’s the
use of fightin’? We ’ve all got our own idayas, an’ maybe
in th’ ind, wan is as right as another.”
“Tm surprised at you, Head Constable, that I am; and
if my poor father was alive this day to hear yu, he’d say
the same. God be with the time when he marched through
Strabane at the head of six hundherd Orangemen in full
regalia, playin’ ‘ Croppies lie down.’”
Speaking thus, Mrs. Macfarlane turned abruptly into
the refreshment-room, and banged the door behind her.
The Head Constable smiled and looked foolish, for he
1 In the north of Ireland yu and tu are pronounced as almost the exact
equivalents of the French yeux and tu.
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 973
was a great man in a small way, and accustomed to be
treated with respect; then he walked off whistling to hide
his discomfiture.
At the time of the blossoming of the Orange lilies James
O’Brien was not at home, having had to go some twenty
miles down the line on official business. The obnoxious
flowers took advantage of his absence to make a gay show.
When he returned, as luck would have it, Mrs. Macfarlane
was away, and had shut up the refreshment-room, but had
not locked it. No one locks doors in Toomevara unless
their absence is to be lengthy. She had left “King Wil-
liam ” behind, and told Joe Kelly to take care of the dog,
in case he should be lonely, for she had been invited to the
wedding of an old fellow-servant, the butler at Lord Dun-
anway’s, who was to be married that day to the steward’s
daughter.
All this Joe Kelly told the station-master on his return,
but he did not say a word about the Orange lilies, being
afraid of an explosion; and, as he said, “detarmined not
to make or meddle, but just to let him find it out him-
self.”
For quite a time Jim was occupied over way-bills in his
little office; but at last his attention was distracted by the
long-continued howling and yelping of a dog.
“Let the baste out, can’t ye? ” he at length said to Kelly.
“T can’t stand listening to ’um anny longer.”
“T was afeard ’t was run over he might be, agin’ she
came back,” said Kelly, “ an’ so I shut ’um up.”
“Sure there ’s no danger. There won't be a thrain in for
the next two hour, an’ if he was run over it self, God knows -
he’d be no loss. ’T isn’t meself ’ud grieve for ’um, th’ ill-
favored cur.”
“ King William ” was accordingly released.
When O’Brien had finished his task, he stood for a time
at the office-door, his hands crossed behind him supporting
his coat-tails, his eyes fixed abstractedly on the sky. Pres-
ently he started for his usual walk up and down the plat-
form, when his eye was at once caught by the flare of the
stately rows of Orange lilies.
“Be the Holy Poker,” he exclaimed, “ but I was right!
?T is orange th’ are, sure enough. What’ll Mary say now?
Faith, ’t is lies they do be tellin’ whin they say there ’s no
974 IRISH LITERATURE.
riptiles in Ireland. That ould woman bangs Banagher, an’
Banagher bangs the divil.”
He stopped in front of the obnoxious flowers.
“Isn't it the murthering pity there ’s nothin’ I can plant
to spite her. She has the pull over me intirely. Shamer-
ogues makes no show at all—you’d pass them unbe-
knownst,—while Orange lilies ye can see a mile off. Now,
. who but herself ’ud be up to the likes o’ this? ”
At the moment he became aware of an extraordinary
commotion among the lilies, and looking closer perceived
“King William ” in their midst, scratching as if for bare
life, scattering mould, leaves, and bulbs to the four winds,
and with every stroke of his hind-legs dealing destruction
to the carefully tended flowers.
The sight filled Jim with sudden gladness.
“More power to the dog!” he cried, with irrepressible
glee. “More power to’um! Sure he has more sinse than
his missis. ‘King William,’ indeed, an’ he rootin’ up
Orange lilies! Ho, ho! Tare an’ ouns; but ’t is the biggest
joke that iver I hard in my life. More power to ye! Good
dog!”
Rubbing his hands in an ecstasy of delight, he watched
“King William ” at his work of devastation, and, regret-
fully be it confessed, when the dog paused, animated him
to fresh efforts by thrilling cries of “ Rats!”
“King William ” sprang wildly hither and thither, run-
ning from end to end of the beds, snapping the brittle lily
stems, scattering the blossoms.
“ Be gum, but it’s great. Look at um now. Cruel wars
to the Queen o’ Spain if iver I seen such shport! Go it,
‘King William!’ Smash thim, me boy! Good dog. Out
wid thim!” roared Jim, tears of mirth streaming down
his cheeks. “ Faith, ’t is mad she’ll be. I'd give sixpence
to see her face. O Lord! O Lord! Sure it’s the biggest
joke that iver was.”
At last “King William” tired of the game, but only
when every lily lay low, and Mrs. Macfarlane’s carefully
tended flower-beds were a chaos of broken stalks and
trampled blossoms.
It was the quietest hour of the afternoon at Toomevara
station. Kelly was busy in the goods-store; Finnerty, the
other porter, had just sauntered across to Mrs. M’Glynn’s
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 975
for a half-glass of whisky, so Jim had all the fun to him-
self, and grudged losing any by rushing in search of some
one to share it. Now, gloating over the destruction
wrought, he picked up “ King William” by the scruff of
the neck, bundled him into the refreshment-room and shut
the door, then, beaming with pure joy, rushed off to tell his
subordinate the news.
“Joe,” he gasped, peering into the dusky goods-store,
“Tm fit to be tied. What d’ ye think? Th’ ould woman’s
Orange lilies is all knocked into smithereens.”
“ Be the laws, sir! ye don’t say so?” cried Kelly. “Sure,
I thought whin ye’d see ’um ye’d go mad an’ break
things.”
“ But, Joe, the fun av it is, I never laid a finger on thim.
°T was the dog—’t was ‘King William,’ if ye plaze, that
did the work; ‘ King William,’ begorra, rootin’ up Orange
liies! Faith, ’t was like Teague’s cocks that fought wan
another though they were all of the same breed.”
“The dog? ” said Kelly, and there was an accent in the
interrogation that angered the station-master.
“Amn’t I afther tellin’ you ’t was the dog: who else?
Maybe ye don’t b’leeve me? ”
“Oh, I do b’leeve ye, sir. Why wouldn't I? On’y I hard
ye say ye’d pull thim up if ’t was Orange lilies they was,
an’ so I thought maybe——’”
“There ’s manny ’s the thing a man sez, that he doesn’t
do: an’ annyhow I didn’t do this, but begad ’t was fine
shport all the same, an’ I’m not a bit sorry. ’T would be
more to me than a tin-poun’ note this minnit if I could see
the face av her whin she finds it out.”
“ She ’ll be back soon now,” said Kelly, “ an’ I misdoubt
but we ’ll hear from her before long.”
Kelly’s words were speedily justified.
As O’Brien in high good-humor, having communicated
the side-splitting joke to Mary and Finnerty, was busy over
an account-book, Kelly came in.
“She ’s back,” he whispered, “ an’ she’s neither to hold
nor to bind. I was watchin’ out, an’ sure ’t was shtruck
all of a hape she was whin she seen thim lilies; an’ now
I’Il take me oath she’s goin’ to come here, for, begob, she
looks as cross as nine highways.”
“Letter come,” chuckled O’Brien, “I’m ready forrer.”
976 IRISH LITERATURE.
At this moment the office-door was burst open with vio-
lence, and Mrs. Macfarlane, in her best Sunday costume,
bonnet, black gloves, and umbrella included, her face very
pale save the cheek-bones, where two bright pink spots
burned, entered the room.
“Misther O’Brien,” she said, in a voice that trembled
with rage, “will you please to inform me the meanin’ of
this dastardly outrage?”
“Arrah, what outrage are ye talkin’ ov, ma’am?”
asked O’Brien innocently. “Sure, be the looks av ye, I
think somethin’ has upset ye intirely. Faith, you ’re
lookin’ as angry as if you were vexed, as the sayin’ is.”
“Oh, to be sure! A great wonder indeed that I should
be vexed. ‘ Crabbit was that cause had,’ ” interrupted Mrs.
Macfarlane with a sneer. “You “re not deceivin’ me, sir.
Full well you know, Misther O’Brien, full well you know
that it’s good reason to be angry you’ve given me this
day. Full well you know the outrage tu which I am al-
ludin’. I’m not taken in by your pretinces, but if there ’s
law in the land or justice I Il have it of yu.”
“Would ye mind, ma’am,” said O’Brien imperturbably,
for his superabounding delight made him feel quite calm
and superior to the angry woman—“ would ye just mind
statin’ in plain English what you ’re talkin’ about, for not
a wan av me knows yit?”
“Oh, yu son of Judas! Oh, yu deceivin’ wretch, as if
it wasn’t yu that is afther desthroyin’ my flower-beds! ”
“Ah, thin it is yer ould flower-beds you’re makin’
all this row about? Yer dirty Orange lilies? Sure ’t is
clared out of the place they ought t’ve been long ago for
weeds. ’T is mesel’ that’s glad they ’re gone, an’ so I tell
ye plump an’ plain, bud as for me desthroyin’ them, sorra
finger iver I laid on thim. I wouldn’t demane mesel’.”
“Hould yer tongue before ye choke with lies,” cried Mrs.
Macfarlane in towering wrath. “ Who but yerself would
do the like? Is it when I can get witnesses that heard yu
swear yu ’d pull them up? Don’t try to fool me.”
“ Begorra, you ’re right enough in that. So I did say it,
an’ so I might have done it too, on’y it was done for me,
an’ the throuble spared me. I wasn’t nixt or nigh thim
whin the desthruction began.”
“ An’ if yu please, Misther O’Brien,” said Mrs. Macfar-
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 977
lane with ferocious politeness, “ will yu kindly mintion, if
yu did not do the job, who did?”
“Faith, that’s where the joke comes in,” said O’Brien
pleasantly. ‘“’T was the very same baste that ruinated my
roses, bad cess to him; yer precious pet, ‘ King William.”
“Oh! is it leavin’ it on the dog y’ are, yu traitorous
Jesuit? the poor wee dog that never harmed yu? Sure ’t is
only a Papist would think of a mean trick like that to shift
the blame.”
The color rose to O’Brien’s face.
“Mrs. Macfarlane, ma’am,” he said with labored civil-
ity, “ wid yer permission we ’ll lave me religion out o’ this.
Maybe if ye say much more, I might be losin’ me timper
wid ye.”
“Much I mind what yu lose,” cried Mrs. Macfarlane,
once more flinging her manners to the winds. “It’s
thransported the likes of yu should be for a set of robbin’,
murderin’, destroyin’ thraytors.”
“Have a care, ma’am, how ye spake to yer betthers.
Robbin’, deceivin’, murdherin’, destroyin’ thraytors in-
deed! I like that! What brought over the lot av yez,
Williamites, an’ Cromwaylians, an’ English, an’ Scotch,
but to rob, an’ decave, an’ desthroy, an’ murdher uz, an’
stale our land, an’ bid uz go ‘ to hell or to Connaught,’ an’
grow fat on what was ours before iver yez came, an’ thin
jibe uz for bein’ poor? Thraytors! Thraytor yerself, for
that ’s what the lot av yez is. Who wants yez here at all?”
Exasperated beyond endurance, Mrs. Macfarlane struck
at the station-master with her neat black umbrella, and
had given him a nasty cut across the brow, when Kelly in-
terfered, as well as Finnerty and Mrs. O’Brien, who rushed
in attracted by the noise. Between them O’Brien was held
back under a shower of blows, and the angry woman
hustled outside, whence she retreated to her own quar-
ters, muttering threats all the way.
“Oh, Jim agra! ’t is bleedin’ y’ are,” shrieked poor anx-
ious Mary wildly. “Oh, wirra, wirra, why did ye dhraw
her on ye? Sure I tould ye how ’t would be. As sure as
God made little apples she 1] process ye, an’ she has the
quality on her side.”
“Let her,” said Jim. “Much good she’ll get by it. Is
it makin’ a liar av me she’d be whin I tould her I didn’t
68
978 | IRISH LITERATURE.
touch her ould lilies. Sure I’ll process her back for
assaultin’ an’ battherin’ me. Ye all saw her, an’ me not
touchin her, the calliagh.” +
“ Begorra, ’t is thrue for him,” said Kelly. “She flag-
ellated him wid her umbrelly, an’ sorra blow missed bud
the wan that didn’t hit, and on’y I was here, an’ lit on her
suddent like a bee on a posy, she ’d have had his life, so she
would.”
The lawsuit between Mrs. Macfarlane and O’Brien never
came off. Perhaps on reflection the former saw she could
not prove that the station-master had uprooted her plants,
or, what was more probable, the sight of him going about
with his head bound up made her realize that he might be
able to turn the tables on her. Accordingly, she meditated
a scheme by which to “pay him out,” as she phrased it,
for his conduct, without the intervention of judge or jury.
Not for an instant did she forget her cause of offense, or
believe O’Brien’s story that it was the dog that had de-
stroyed her Orange lilies. After some consideration she
hit on an ingenious device, that satisfied her as being at
once supremely anoying to her enemy and well within the
law. Her lilies, emblems of the religious and political
faith that were in her, were gone; but she still had means
to testify to her beliefs, and protest against O’Brien and
all that he represented to her mind.
Next day, when the midday train had just steamed into
the station, Jim was startled by hearing a wild cheer.
“ Hi, ‘King William!’ Hi, ‘ King William!’ Come back,
‘King William!’ ‘ King William,’ my darlin’, ‘King Wil-
liam!?”
The air rang with the shrill party-cry, and when Jim
rushed out he found that Mrs. Macfarlane had allowed her
dog to run down the platform just as the passengers were
alighting, and was now following him, under the pretense
of calling him back. There was nothing to be done. The
dog’s name certainly was “ King William,” and Mrs. Mac-
farlane was at liberty to recall him if he strayed.
Jim stood for a moment like one transfixed.
“ Faith, I b’leeve ’t is the divil’s grandmother she is,” he
exclaimed.
Mrs. Macfarlane passed him with a deliberately unsee-
1 Calliagh, hag.
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 979
ing eye. Had he been the gatepost she could not have
taken less notice of his presence, as, having made her way
to the extreme end of the platform cheering for “ King
William,” she picked up her dog, and marched back in
triumph.
“I wonder how he likes that?” she said to herself with
a deflant toss of the head, and a pleasing conviction that
he did not like it at all.
“Oh, say nothin’ to her, Jim! Oh, Jim, for God’s sake
say nothin’ to her!” pleaded Mary.
“JT won't,” said Jim grimly. “Not aword. But if she
does id again, I'll be ready forrer, so I will. I'll make her
sup sorrow.”
Speedily did it become evident that Mrs. Macfarlane was
pursuing a regular plan of campaign, for at the arrival of
every train that entered the station that day, she went
through the same performance of letting loose the dog and
then pursuing him down the platform, waving her arms
and yelling for “ King William.”
By the second challenge, Jim had risen to the situation
and formed his counterplot. He saw and heard her in
stony silence, apparently as indifferent to her tactics as
she to his presence; hut he was only biding his time. No
sooner did passengers alight and enter the refreshment-
room, than, having just given them time to be seated, he
rushed up, threw open the door of his enemy’s head-
quarters, and, putting in his head, cried:
“Take yer places, gintlemin, immaydiately. The thrain’s
just off. Hurry up, will yez! She’s away.”
The hungry and discomfited passengers hurried out, pell-
mell, and Mrs. Macfarlane was left speechless with indig-
nation.
“T bet I ’ve got the whip-hand av her this time,” chuckled
Jim, as he gave the signal to start.
Mrs. Macfarlane’s spirit, however, was not broken.
From morning until night, whether the day was wet or
fine, she greeted the arrival of each train by loud cries for
“King William,” and on each occasion Jim retorted by
bundling out all her customers before they could touch
bite or sup.
If those laugh best who laugh last O’Brien certainly had
the victory in this curious contest, for the result of his
980 IRISH LITERATURE.
activity was that, during all the time their feud lasted,
Mrs. Macfarlane scarcely made a penny. She began to
look worn and anxious, but was still defiant, still indomi-
table.
“ Ah thin! Jim, how can ye keep id up?” asked Mary.
“ Sure ’t isn’t like ye at all to be goin’ on that ways. ’T is
you ought to have the sinse, a married man, with yer busi-
ness to look afther, an’ callin’ yerself a Catholic too.
Faith, I dunno what Father McCarthy 'll say to ye whin ye
go to yer duty. Givin’ bad example like that to yer own
childher.”
“ How can she keep id up?” asked Jim. “She began id,
and let her shtop first.”
“ I know she did, but what id ye expect from her? God
help her, she ’s that bitther, gall isn’t in it with her. Sure
you and her is the laughin’-shtock av iviry wan that comes
nigh the shtation. The shmall boys do be crowdin’ in to
hear her, an’ see ye chasin’ out her customers afther.”
“Let her shtop first,” repeated Jim. “In all me born
days, Mary, I nivir saw a woman like ye for bein’ down on
yer own husban’. ’Tis ashamed of ye I am for not
shtandin’ up betther for yer side. Wasn’t it she gave me
the provoke? Whoelse? Idonehernoharrm. Why did
she begin at me?”
“Maybe, but yer doin’ her harrm now.”
“So I am, so I am,” said Jim with relish. “ Faith she
must be sorry she began the game. Troth she’s like the
tailor that sewed for nothin’, and foun’ the thread himself.
Not much she’s makin’ these times, I’m thinkin’.”
“Oh, wirra, Jim! What’s come to ye at all? ”T is the
kind-hearted man ye used to be, an’ now I don’t—”
But Jim had had enough of conjugal remonstrance, and
went out banging the door behind him.
The feud still continued.
Each day Mrs. Macfarlane, gaunter, fiercer, paler, and
more resolute in ignoring the station-master’s presence,
flaunted her principles up and down the platform. Each
day did Jim hurry the departure of the trains and sweep
off her customers. Never before had there been such
punctuality known at Toomevara, which is situated on an
easy-going line, where usually the guard, when indignant
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 981
tourists pointed out that the express was some twenty min-
utes late, was accustomed to reply:
“Why, so she is. ’T is thrue for ye.”
One day, however, Mrs. Macfarlane did not appear.
She had come out for the first train, walking a trifle
feebly, and uttering her war-cry in a somewhat quavering
voice. When the next came no Mrs. Macfarlane greeted it.
The small boys who daily gathered to see the sight—any-
thing is worth looking at in Toomevara—crept away dis-
appointed when the train, after a delay quite like that of
old times, at last steamed out of the station. Jim himself
was perplexed, and a little aggrieved. He had grown used
to the daily strife, and missed the excitement of retorting
on his foe.
“Maybe ’t is tired of it she is,” he speculated. “Time
forrer. She knows now she won’t have things all her own
way. She’s too domineerin’ by half.”
“What ’s wrong with th’ ould wan, sir?” asked Joe
Kelly when he met O’Brien. “She didn’t shtir whin she
hard the thrain.”
“Faith, I dunno,” said Jim. “ Hatchin’ more disthur-
bance, I'll bet. Faith, she’s nivir well but whin she’s
doin’ mischief.”
“She looks mighty donny' these times,” remarked
Kelly, but his superior appeared to take no heed.
Secretly, however, he was uneasy, and blustered a little
to himself to keep up his spirits.
“°T is lyin’ low she is,” he muttered, “to shpring some
other divilment on me, but I’m up to her.”
It would not do, and after a time he found himself wan-
dering in the direction of the refreshment-room. There
was no sign of life visible, so far as Jim could see; but he
was unwilling to observe too closely, for fear of catching
Mrs. Macfarlane’s eye while in the act of taking an undig-
nified interest in her proceedings.
Suddenly he remembered that the windows at the back
had the lower panes muffed to imitate ground glass, and
that one was scratched in the corner, thus affording a con-
venient peephole. He stole round as if on burglary intent,
with many cautious glances to right and left; then assured
that no one was watching him, peered in. From his posi-
1 Donny, dauney, delicate.
982 IRISH LITERATURE.
tion he could not see much, but he discerned a black heap
of something lying in the middle of the room, and was
gure he heard a groan, Considerably startled, he hastened
round to Kelly.
“ Joe,” he said, “maybe y’ ought just to look in an’ see
if anythin’ is wrong wid th’ ould woman.”
“ An’ what ’ud be wrong wid her?” said Kelly easily.
He hated being disturbed. “ She ’ll be out to meet the nixt
thrain as fresh as a throut; see if she doesn’t.”
“ All the same, I think ye ’d better go.”
“Sure I’ll go whin I’m done here. I’ve a power 0’
worrk to git through.”
“Work indeed! All the work ye do will nivir kill ye.
Faith you’re as lazy as Finn McCool’s dog, that rested his
head agin’ the wall to bark.”
“°T is aisy for ye to talk,” said Joe. “Sure Ill go if ye
like, sir, bud she ’1] shnap the head off av me,” and he dis-
appeared in the direction of Mrs. Macfarlane’s quarters.
A moment more, and Jim heard him shouting, “ Misther
O’Brien! Misther O'Brien!” He ran at the sound. There,
a tumbled heap, lay Mrs. Macfarlane, no longer a defiant
virago, but a weak, sickly, elderly woman, partly supported
on Joe Kelly’s knee, her face ghastly pale, her arms hang-
ing limp.
“Be me sowl, bud I think she’s dyin’,” cried Kelly.
“She just raised her head whin she saw me an’ wint off in
a faint.”
“ Lay her flat, Joe, lay her flat. Where’s the whisky?”
Jim rushed behind the counter, rummaged amongst the
bottles, and came back with half a glass of whisky in his
hand.
“Lave her to me,” he said, “an do you run an’ tell the
missus to come here at wanst. Maybe she’ll know what
to do.”
He tried to force the whisky between Mrs. Macfarlane’s
set teeth, spilling a good deal of it in the process. She
opened her eyes for a moment, looked at him vacantly, and
fainted again.
Mary came in to find her husband gazing in a bewildered
fashion at his prostrate enemy, and took command in a way
that excited his admiration.
“ Here,” said she, “ give uz a hand to move her on to the
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 983
seat. Jim, do ye run home an’ get Biddy to fill two or
three jars wid boilin’ wather, an’ bring thim along wid a
blanket. She’s as cowld as death. Joe, fly off wid ye for
the docther.”
“ What docther will I go for, ma’am? ”
“The firrst ye can git,” said Mary, promptly beginning
to chafe the inanimate woman’s hands and loosen her
clothes.
When the doctor came, he found Mrs. Macfarlane laid on
an impromptu couch composed of two of the cushioned
benches placed side by side. She was wrapped in blankets,
had hot bottles to her feet and sides, and a mustard plaster
over her heart.
“ Bravo! Mrs. O’Brien,” he said. “I couldn't have done
better myself. I believe you have saved her life by being
80 quick—at least, saved it for the moment, for I think she
is in for a severe illness. She will want careful nursing
to pull her through.”
“She looks rale bad,” assented Mary.
“ She must be put to bed at once. Where does she live? ”
“She lodges down the town,” said Mary, “at old Mrs.
Smith’s in Castle Street; bud sure she has no wan to look
afther her there.”
“Tt is too far to move her in her present state. The
hospital is nearer; I might try to get her there.”
As he spoke Mrs. Macfarlane opened her eyes. Appar-
ently she had understood, for she shook her head with some-
thing of her former energy, and exclaimed: “ No, No!”
“What did you say?” asked the doctor. “Don’t you
like the idea of the hospital?” But Mrs. Macfarlane had
again lapsed into unconsciousness.
“What are we to do with her?” said the doctor. “Is
there no place where they would take her in?”
Mary glanced at Jim, but he did not speak.
“Sure there ’s a room in our house,” she ventured, after
an awkward pause.
“The very thing,” said the doctor, “if you don’t mind
the trouble, and if Mr. O’Brien does not object.”
Jim made no answer, but walked out.
“He doesn’t, docther,” cried Mary. “Sure he has a
rale good heart. I'll run off now, an’ get the bed ready.”
As she passed Jim, who stood sulkily by the door, she
984 IRISH LITERATURE.
contrived to squeeze his hand. “ God bless ye, me own Jim.
You ’ll be none the worse forrit. ’T is no time for bearin’
malice, an’ our blessed Lady ’ll pray for ye this day.”
Jim was silent.
“T ig a cruel shame she should fall on uz,” he said when
his wife had disappeared; but he offered no further resis-
tance.
Borne on an impromptu stretcher by Jim, Joe, Finnerty,
and the doctor, Mrs. Macfarlane was carried to the station-
master’s house, undressed by Mary, and put to bed in the
spotlessly clean whitewashed upper room.
The cold and shivering had now passed off, and she
was burning. Nervous fever, the doctor anticipated. She
raved about her dog, about Jim, about the passengers, her
rent, and fifty other things that made it evident her circum-
stances had preyed on her mind.
Poor Mary was afraid of her at times; but there are no
trained nurses at Toomevara, and guided by Dr. Doherty’s
directions she tried to do her best, and managed wonder-
fully well.
There could be no doubt Jim did not like having the in-
valid in the house.
“ Here’s everythin’ upside down,” he grumbled,—“ Mary
up to her eyes in worrk, an’ the house an’ childer at sixes
an’ sevens, an’ all for an ould hag that cudn’t giv uz a
civil worrd.”
Kitty was wonderfully helpful to her mother, and took
care of her brothers and sisters, but her father grumbled
at his wife’s absence.
“Why on earth should the woman be saddled on uz?”
he asked. “Hasn’t she anny frinds av her own soort, I'd
like to know? Sure, ’t is hard enough for uz to pay our
own way, let alone gettin’ beef-tay an’ port wine for the
likes av her, to say nothin’ about her wearin’ you, Mary, to
skin an’ bone.”
“ God help the craythur, sure I do it willin’,” said Mary.
“ We cudn’t lave her there to die on the flure.”
“Faith, I’m thinkin’ ’t would be a long time before she
done as much for you.”
“Maybe,” said Mary, “an” maybe not; but sure, where
?ud we be anny betther than her, if ’t was that plan we wint
on?”
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 985
“ Ah, ’t is too soft y’ are intirely,” said Jim, going off in
a huff.
In his inmost soul, however, he was pleased with his wife,
though he kept saying to himself:
“Tf it had on’y been annyone else besides that ould crow,
I wouldn’t begrudge it.”
When from the unhappy woman’s ravings he learned how
the feud had preyed on her mind, and discovered the straits
to which she had been reduced, a dreadfully guilty feeling
stole over him, which he tried in vain to combat.
“Sure, ’twas her own fault,” he said to himself.
“ Doesn’t every wan know I’m the peaceablist man goin’,
if I’m on’y let alone? She desarved to be paid out, so she
did, an’ I’m not wan bit sorry.”
This did not prevent him from feeling very miserable.
He became desperately anxious that Mrs. Macfarlane
should not die, and astonished Mary by bringing home
various jellies and meat extracts that he fancied might be
good for the patient, but he did this with a shy and hang-
dog air by no means natural to him, and always made some
ungracious speech as to the trouble, to prevent Mary think-
ing he was sorry for the part he had played. He replied
with a downcast expression to all inquiries from outsiders
as to Mrs. Macfarlane’s health, but he brought her dog into
the house, and fed it well.
“Not for her sake, God knows,” he explained, “ but be-
kase the poor baste was frettin’, an’ I cudn’t see him there
wid no wan to look to him.”
He refused, however, to style the animal “King Wil-
liam,” and called it “ Billy ” instead, a name to which it
soon learned to answer.
One evening, when the whitewashed room was all aglow
with crimson light that flooded through the western win-
dow, Mrs. Macfarlane returned to consciousness. Mary
was sitting by the bedside sewing, having sent out the chil-
dren in charge of Kitty to secure quiet in the house. For
a long time, unobserved by her nurse, the sick woman lay
feebly trying to understand. Suddenly she spoke.
“ What is the matter?”
Mary jumped.
“To be sure,” she said, laying down her needlework.
986 IRISH LITERATURE.
“?T is very bad you were intirely, ma’am, but thanks be to
God, sure you ’re betther now.”
“Where am I?” asked Mrs. Macfarlane after a consid-
erable pause.
“In the Station House, ma’am.”
“ An’ who are you?”
“Sure, don’t ye know me? I’m Mary O’Brien.”
“ Mary O’Brien—O’Brien? ”
“Yis, faith! Jim O’Brien’s wife.”
“ An’ is this Jim O’Brien’s house?”
“ Whose else id it be? But there now, don’t talk anny
more. Sure, we ’ll tell ye all about it whin you ’re betther.
The docther sez you ’re to be kep’ quite.”
“ But who brought me here? ”
“roth, ’t was carried in ye were, an’ you near dyin’.
Hush up now, will ye? Take a dhrop o’ this, an’ thry to go
to shleep.”
Mrs. Macfarlane lay silent, but she did not go to sleep.
She seemed to be fitting things together in her mind like
pieces of a Chinese puzzle, as she watched the sunset crim-
son glow and fade on the opposite wall.
“How long have I been here?” she asked Mary next
morning, when she awoke refreshed by a good night’s rest.
“ Goin’ on three weeks, ma’am.”
“ An’ was it you nursed me?”
“Sure I did.”
“ An’ who’s goin’ to pay you? I’ve no money.”
“Not a wan of me knows,” said Mary, with a touch of
temper, “nor cares naythur. *T wasn’t for yer money we
tuk ye in. Hould up now a minnit till I change yer cap.
Docther Doherty ’s comin’.”
Presently Doctor Doherty bustled in—a fresh-colored,
cheery little man.
“That’s right, that’s right,” he said. “Going on finely,
go you are. ’Pon my word, Mrs. Macfarlane, you have
every reason to thank Mrs. O’Brien here for being alive
to-day. It was touch and go, I can tell you, at one time,
touch and go; but here you are now, doing beautifully.”
When Mary went downstairs to get some beef-tea Mrs.
Macfarlane turned anxiously to the doctor.
“ Doctor,” she said, “ who’s supportin’ me here?”
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 987
“Don’t worry your head about that yet awhile,” replied
the doctor. “ Wait till you ’re better.”
“But I want tu know. ’T is preyin’ on my mind.”
“The O’Briens have taken care of you ever since you fell
ill, and have let you want for nothing. A kinder creature
than that woman never drew breath.”
“ But, doctor, I can’t pay them back ; an’ if yu only knew,
this is the last house in the kingdom I'd like to be in, an’
they are the last people Id like tu take charity from.”
“Now, Mrs. Macfarlane, Mrs. Macfarlane, put all that
nonsense out of your head. Who’s talking of charity?
Time enough to think of this when you ’re well and strong.”
“It’s grieved I am intirely that ’t was to them I was
brought. Who sent me here at all?”
“T did,” said the doctor. “There was no place else to
send you to. It was too far to carry you to your lodgings,
and they told me there was no one there to nurse you.”
“No more there was; but I'd sooner have died, doctor—
tig the truth I’m tellin’ yu. ’T was O’Brien brought me
tu this.”
“Oh, I heard of all that folly,” said the doctor, “and
upon my word it seems to me you should both be ashamed
of yourselves. Let it pass. It is over and done with now.”
“ But, doctor, he rooted up my flowers.”
“Well, he says he didn’t; but sure it wasn’t to please
him you planted them.”
“ He said it was the poor dog.”
“ And perhaps it was; but anyhow, whatever he did it
seems to me his wife has made amends, and you ought, to
live like decent, peaceful neighbors for the future.”
“ Where is my dog? I suppose he killed it.”
“Not he. Your dog is downstairs, as fat as a fool: I'll
tell them to let it in here presently. But now lie down and
sleep, like a good creature, for you ’re talking far too much.
Take that bottle every two hours, and as much nourish-
ment as you can swallow, and you ’l] soon have no need for
me.”
By and by said Mrs. Macfarlane to Mary, “ The doctor
thinks I ’m doin’ nicely.”
“So he does,” said Mary. “ Praise be to God, but you're
gettin’ stronger every minnit.”
“I think, Mrs. O’Brien, ’tis time for me tu be movin’
988 IRISH LITERATURE.
back to my lodgin’s. Perhaps I could manage it to-morrow.
I’m sure I’m greatly obligated to yu for all yu ve done,
but it ’s a shame to be beholden to yu any longer.”
“é Ig it movin’ you ’re talkin’ ov?” asked Mary. “Why,
woman alive, you ’re ag wake as wather. You won't be fit
to shtan’ for another tin days, not to talk o’ lavin’ the
house.”
“I'd sooner go,” said Mrs. Macfarlane obstinately.
“ Now, don’t be talkin’ foolishness. You’ll kill yerself
wid yer nonsinse.”
“ An’ if I do,” said Mrs. Macfarlane bitterly, “ who is tu
grieve? ”
At this moment in rushed “ King William ” in wild ex-
citement, leaped on the bed, licked his mistress’s face,
wagged his tail, and whined for sheer joy.
“There ’s wan that loves ye anyways,” said Mary smil-
ing; and she noticed two big tears start suddenly from
Mrs. Macfarlane’s hard eyes, and drop on the dog’s coat, as
she bent her head to conceal them.
“Sure, she has a heart, afther all,” was Mrs. O’Brien’s
unspoken comment. Then she tucked in her patient, and
left her lying wearily back on the pillow, her thin hand rest-
ing on “ King William’s ” back, as he snuggled beside her.
Next day, when she came upstairs, carrying a glass of
milk with a fresh egg beaten into it, what was her dismay
to find Mrs. Macfarlane, a long figure in her white night-
gown, had got out of bed, and was trying to make her way
across the room by clinging to tables and chairs.
“ God be good to uz! what are ye about? ” cried Mary in
dismay. “Why didn’t ye ring the bell I left beside ye, if
ye wanted annythin’? I’d have been up to ye before ye
cud say ‘ Jack Robinson.’ ”
“Thank yu,” said Mrs. Macfarlane, “I only wanted to
find my clothes. I’m a deal better and stronger, and ’t is
tu bad tu be lyin’ here any longer.”
“Yer clothes, is it? Why, I hung thim in the room be-
yant. Ye won’t be wantin’ thim for another week, sure.”
“But I do,” said Mrs. Macfarlane. “1I’Il not stay here
any longer. I’m goin’ away.”
“Goin’ away, an’ you not fit to walk! Ah, thin, where
?d ye be goin’ to? Now get back to your bed again, alanna,
an’ don’t be foolish.”
CHARLOTTE O'CONOR ECCLES. 989
Mrs. Macfarlane would have resisted, would have re-
sented being called foolish, but a sudden weakness came
over her. Before she knew she was caught in Mary’s
strong arms, and half-supported, half-carried back to the
bed that was so gratefully warm. There she lay exhausted.
At last she found voice.
“ Yu ’ve been very good to me, Mrs. O’Brien, an’ I’m not
unmindful of it; but I cannot stay any longer under this
roof, and beholden to your husband. I must go.”
“Sure ye’ll go whin you ’re able.”
“ I'm able now.”
“Deed you ’re not, an’ as for bein’ beholden, God knows
we don’t grudge it to you, and you shouldn’t grudge takin’
it”
“P’raps yu don’t, but ’t is his money.”
“ Whisht, now,” said Mary. “Sure, Jim isn’t as bad as
ye make out. I tell ye what, I ’ve been his wife this seven-
teen year, an’ his heart ’s as soft as butther.”
“T’ve not found it so.”
“That was bekase you wint provokin’ him; but me b’leef
is of both of yez that yer bark ’s worse than yer bite, but I
won’t shtay here argying anny longer. You ax the docther
to-morrow, an’ see what he thinks.”
When Jim came in to supper his wife said to him: “ That
craythur upstairs is mad to get away. She thinks we be-
grudge her the bit she ates.”
Jim was silent. Then he said: “Sure, annythin’ that’s
bad she ’ll b’leeve av uz.”
“But ye’ve niver been up to see her. Shlip into the
room now an’ ax her how she’s goin’ on. Let bygones be
bygones in the name of God.”
“I won't,” said Jim.
“ Oh yes, ye will! Sure afther all, though ye didn’t mane
it, you "re the cause av it. Go to her now.”
“T don’t like.”
“Ah, go! ’Tis yer place, an’ you sinsibler than she is.
Go an’ tell her to shtay till she’s well. Faith I think that
undher all that way of hers she’s softher than she looks.
I tell ye, Jim, I seen her cryin’ over the dog, bekase she
thought ’t was th’ only thing that loved her.”
Half-pushed by Mary, Jim made his way up the steep
stair, and knocked at the door of Mrs. Macfarlane’s attic.
990 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Come in,” said a feeble voice, and he stumbled into the
room.
When Mrs. Macfarlane saw who it was, a flame lit in her
hollow eyes.
“I'm sorry,” she said with grim politeness, “that ye
find me here, Misther O’Brien; but it isn’t my fault. I
wanted tu go a while ago, an’ your wife wouldn’t let me.”
“ An’ very right she was; you’re not fit for it. Sure,
don’t be talkin’ av goin’ till you 're better, ma’am,” said
Jim awkwardly. “You’re heartily welcome for me. I
come up to say—to say, I hope ye’ll be in no hurry to
move.”
“ Yu re very good, but it’s not to be expected I'd find
myself easy under this roof, where I can assure yu I’d
never have come of my own free will, an’ I apologize to yu,
Misther O’Brien, for givin’ so much trouble—not that I
could help myself.”
“Sure, ’tis I that should apologize,” blurted out Jim.
“ An” rale sorry I am—though maybe ye won't b’leeve me—
that ever I dhruv the customers out.”
For a long time Mrs. Macfarlane did not speak.
“T could forgive that easier than your rootin’ up my
lilies,” she said in a strained voice.
“But that I never did. God knows an’ sees me this
night an’ He knows that I niver laid a finger on thim. I
kem out an’ foun’ the dog there scrattin’ at thim, an’ if this
was me last dyin’ worrd, ’t is thrue.”
“ An’ ’t was really the dog?”
“It was, though I done wrong in laughin’ at him, an’
cheerin’ him on; but sure ye wouldn’t mind me whin I told
ye he was at me roses, an’ I thought it sarved ye right, an’
that ye called him ‘ King William ’ to spite me.”
“So I did,” said Mrs. Macfarlane, and she added more
gently, “I’m sorry now.”
“ Are ye so?” said Jim brightening. “ Faith, I’m glad
to hear ye say it. We was both in the wrong, ye see, an’ if
ye bear no malice, I don’t.”
“ You have been very good to me, seein’ how I misjudged
you,” said Mrs. Macfarlane.
“Not a bit av it; an’ ’t was the wife annyhow, for be-
gorra I was hardened against ye, so I was.”
“ An’ you ve spent yer money on me, an’ I—”
CHARLOTTE O’CONOR ECCLES. 991
“ Sure don’t say a worrd about id. I owed it to you, so
I did, but begorra ye won’t have to complain av wantin’
custom wanst you ’re well.”
“TJ hadn't taken a shillin’ for a fortnight,” said Mrs.
Macfarlane in a low voice.
Jim got very hot, and shifted uncomfortably from one
foot to another.
“ Sure, I was a brute baste,” he said, “ an’ you a woman.”
“No; I see now I drew it on myself. ’T was I provoked
you; I was set against you because—because—”
“Oh, sure I know why, an’ there’s too much of it in
the world, God help uz, espicially in this misfortunit coun-
thry, but we ’ll live and let live. Sure people isn’t half as
bad as ye think whin ye don’t know thim.”
“TJ tell you what,” said Mrs. Macfarlane; “I won't call
the dog ‘ King William’ any more.”
“ An’ why not?” said Jim in his repentance. “Sure I
don’t mind, as long as ’t isn’t done to anger me. ’T is as
good a name as another.”
“ I had no right ever to call him that, an’ you objectin’.”
“ Begorra,” said Jim, “Ill tell ye what: I think mesel’
King William was a betther man any day than King James
—to his own side,— but ’t was the feelin’ av the thing that
vexed me. An’ now I want to tell ye not to be down-sper-
ited. You’ll soon be about an’ makin’ heaps o’ money.”
Mrs. Macfarlane smiled wanly.
“No chance o’ that, I’m afraid. What with my illness
an’ all that went before it, business is gone. Look at the
place shut up this three weeks an’ more.”
“Not it,” said Jim. “Sure, sence ye ve been sick I put
our little Kitty, the shlip, in charge of the place, an’ she’s
made a power o’ money for ye, an’ she on’y risin’ sixteen,
an’ havin’ to help her mother an’ all. She’s a clever girl,
so she is, though I sez it, an’ she ruz the prices all round.
She couldn’t manage with the cakes, not knowin’ how to
bake thim like yerself; but sure I bought her plenty av bis-
cuits at Connolly’s, and her mother cut her sandwidges,
and made tay, an’ the dhrinks was all there as you left
them, an’ Kitty kep’ count av all she sould.”
Mrs. Macfarlane looked at him for a moment queerly;
then she drew the sheet over her face and began to sob.
992 IRISH LITERATURE.
Jim, feeling wretchedly uncomfortable, crept down-
stairs.
“Go to the craythur, Mary,” he said. “Sure she’s
cryin’. We ve made it up,—an’ see here, let her want for
nothin’.”
Mary ran upstairs, took grim Mrs. Macfarlane in her
arms and actually kissed her; and Mrs. Macfarlane’s grim-
ness melted away, and the two women cried together for
sympathy.
Now, as the trains come into Toomevara station, Jim
goes from carriage to carriage making himself a perfect
nuisance to passengers with well-filled ]uncheon-baskets.
“Won't ye have a cup o’ tay, me lady? There’s plinty av
time, an’ sure we ’ve the finest tay here that you ’ll get on
the line. There’s nothin’ like it this side o’ Dublin. A
glass o’ whisky, sir? ’Tis only the best that’s kep’; or
sherry wine? Ye won’t be shtoppin’ agin anywheres that
you ’ll like it as well. Sure if ye don’t want to get out—
though there’s plenty o’ time—I’ll give the ordher an’
have it sent to yes. Cakes, ma’am, for the little ladies?
’T is a long journey, an’ maybe they'll be hungry—an’
apples? Apples is mighty good for childher. She keeps
fine apples, if ye like thim.”
Mrs. Macfarlane has grown quite fat, is at peace with all
mankind, takes the deepest interest in the O’Brien family,
and calls her dog “ Billy.”
varies Google
MARIA EDGEWORTH
From the original painting by A. Chappel
varies Google
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
(1767—1849.)
Maria EDGEWORTH, the author who gave the first impulse to the
novel of national character and to the novel with a moral purpose,
was born Jan. 1, 1767. She was the eldest daughter by his first
marriage of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who came of a family set-
tled in Ireland since the reign of Elizabeth which had given its name
to the village of Edgeworthstown in County Longford. Shortly
after 1773 Mr. Edgeworth removed with his family to Ireland, and
the mansion-house of Edgeworthstown from this time became their
home.
Under her father’s care Maria soon became an accomplished
scholar, and at a very early age was able to join him in various
literary projects. These, however, were not given to the world at
the time, and it was only in 1798 that their first joint production,
‘A Treatise on Practical Education,’ appeared. The famous ' Essay
on Irish Bulls,’ another joint production, was published in 1802, and
at once took a high place in the estimation both of the critics and
of the public.
In 1810 Miss Edgeworth published ‘ Early Lessons’ in ten parts,
and in 1815 her father added a continuation to this work. ‘Castle
Rackrent,’ the first of Miss Edgeworth’s independent works, ap-
peared in 1801. This tale, which in some respects is one of her best,
proved a i success, and was followed for a number of years bya
remarkable series, comprising ‘ Belinda,’ ‘ Leonora,’ ‘ Popular Tales,’
“Tales of Fashionable Life’ (containing ‘The Absentee’), ‘Patron-
age,’ ‘ Harrington,’ ‘Ormond,’ and others. The rich humor, pathetic
tenderness, and admirable tact displayed in these works prompted
Sir Walter Scott, as he himself says, to ‘‘ attempt something for my
own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so
fortunately achieved for Ireland.” In her works Miss Edgeworth
showed very considerable versatility, being now philosophic with
wisdom, now humorous, now cleverly descriptive, now pathetic,
and always master of the immediate subject in hand.
Mr. Edgeworth died in 1817, and this was a severe blow to Maria.
Of him she writes: ‘‘ Few, I believe, have ever enjoyed such happi-
ness, or such advantages, as I have had in the instruction, society,
and unbounded confidence and affection of such a father and such
afriend.” Mr. Edgeworth had been married four times and left a
numerous family, the care and education of whom were ever a grate-
ful duty to his affectionate daughter. In 1820 she published his
‘Memoirs,’ partly written by himself.
In 1822, “Rosamond,” a sequel to ‘ Early Lessons,’ appeared, fol-
lowed by “Harry and Lucy’ and ‘The Parent's Assistant,’ which
contains some of her best known stories for children.
Stories for children were, indeed, her earliest work. She wrote
them for the amusement and instruction of her younger sisters and
993
994 IRISH LITERATURE.
brothers, who were under her charge in the frequent absence of her
father and stepmother.
She herself tells us that she was about twenty-four years old when
she began this work, and she also explains that these tales were
first of all written on a slate ; if they were approved by the chil-
dren, they were copied and added to the collection. aria Edge-
worth was thus enabled to write from the child’s point of view, and
in simple, direct language suited to their comprehension. As com-
pared with the characters in the books published during the fifty
years preceding their advent, Maria Edgeworth’s were real children,
and not mere lay figures named to represent them, or pegs upon
which to hang appropriate moral and religious sentiments. More-
over, they were generally well-bred and reasonable children, who
were early taught patience, self-control, and the necessity of bear-
ing the consequences of their follies and mistakes—three important
lessons which can never be without their effects in after-life. All
of her stories contain some very strong and direct moral teaching,
but it is rarely so obtruded as to rob the tale of its living human
interest.
It was not long before she ventured on more ambitious designs,
but when she had fairly won her place in literature as a writer of
novels she returned to her early work in ‘Frank’ and one or two
other tales for children, Nevertheless, her novels, clever as they
are, have not held the attention of readers more surely than her
children’s stories, and it is by these that she may after all be longest
remembered.
In 1823 Miss Edgeworth, with two of her sisters, visited Sir
Walter Scott at Abbotsford, where they spent a fortnight. Here
she was delighted with everything she heard and saw, and capti-
vated by the massive genius of the ‘‘man of the house.” He was
equally delighted with her culture and the simplicity of her man-
ners, and the visit ended in conducing still more to their mutual
respect and esteem. In 1834 appeared her popular story ‘ Helen.”
She concluded her life’s work by ‘ Orlandino,’a story for the young.
In recognition of her valuable contributions to the literature of
her country she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish
Academy. The value of this distinction may be estimated when it
is known that but three ladies besides Miss Edgeworth have been so
rewarded—Miss Beaufort, Mrs. Somerville, and Miss Stokes. The
later years of her long life, with few exceptions, were passed at
Edgeworthstown, where she remained ‘‘ unspoiled by literary fame,
loved in the family circle which daily assembled in the library, and
admired by all as a pattern of an intellectual and amiable woman.”
Here too, she died on the 22d of May, 1849.
Such are the leading points in the literary life, of this gifted lady,
who was a woman of remarkable vigor of character. Sherefused to
marry the man she loved because she did not think it right to leave
her friends, her parents, and her country. She had the courage to be-
gin the study of the Spanish language when she was seventy years
old. Her rare modesty caused her to wish that no life of her should
ever be published, and she once declared, “My only remains shall
be in the church at Edgeworthstown.” It is to be regretted that
. MARIA EDGEWORTH. 995
for the same reason no portrait of her exists; but we give the fol-
lowing sketch of her appearance from the loving pen of her friend,
Mrs. 8. C. Hall: ‘‘In person she was very i—she was ‘lost in
a crowd’; her face was pale and thin, her features irregular; they
may have been considered plain even in youth; but her expression
was go benevolent, her manners were so perfectly well bred, par-
taking of English dignity and Irish frankness, that one never
thought of her with reference to either beauty or plainness. She
ever occupied without claiming attention, charming continually by
her singularly pleasant voice, while the earnestness and truth that
ed from her bright blue, very blue eyes, increased the value
of every word she uttered. She knew how to listen as well as
talk, and gathered information in a manner highly complimentary
to those from whom she sought it; her attention seemed far more the
effect of respect than of curiosity; her sentences were frequently
epigrammatic; she more than once suggested to me the story of the
good child in the fairy tale, from whose lips dropped diamonds and
Is whenever they were opened. She was ever neat and particu-
lar in her dress, a duty to society which literary women sometimes
culpably neglect ; her feet and hands were so delicate and small as
to be almost childlike. In a word, Maria Edgeworth was one of
those women who do not seem to require beauty.”
The circulation of Miss Edgeworth’s works has been enormous.
An edition of the novels and tales was published in eighteen small
volumes, London, 1832; and of the tales and miscellaneous pieces
in nine volumes, in 1848, and the more popular stories are con-
stantly being reprinted on both sides of the Atlantic.
CASTLE RACKRENT.
Monday Morning.
Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose
estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free
time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the
MEMOIRS OF THE RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my duty to
say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My
real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have al-
ways been known by no other than “ Honest Thady,” after-
ward, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to
hear them calling me “ Old Thady,” and now I ’ve come to
“Poor Thady;” for I wear a long great-coat winter and
summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into
the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Hollan-
tide next I’ve had it these seven years; it holds on by a
single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To look at
me, you would hardly think “Poor Thady” was the
father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and
996 IRISH LITERATURE.
never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than
fifteen hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon
honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as
I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The
family of the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the
most ancient in the kingdom. Everybody knows this is not
the old family name, which was O’Shaughlin, related to the
kings of Ireland—but that was before my time.
My grandfather was a driver to the great Sir Patrick
O’Shaughlin, and I heard him, when I was a boy, telling
how the Castle Rackrent estate came to Sir Patrick; Sir
Tallyhoo Rackrent was cousin-german to him, and had a
fine estate of his own, only never a gate upon it, it being his
maxim that a car was the best gate. Poor gentleman! he
lost a fine hunter and his life, at last, by it, all in one day’s
hunt. But I ought to bless that day, for the estate came
straight into the family, upon one condition, which Sir Pat-
rick O’Shaughlin at the time took sadly to heart, they say,
but thought better of it afterwards, seeing how large a
stake depended upon it: that he should, by Act of Parlia-
ment, take and bear the surname and arms of Rackrent.
Now it was that the world was to see what was in Sir
Patrick. On coming into the estate he gave the finest en-
tertainment ever was heard of in the country; not a man
could stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself, who
could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the three
kingdoms itself. He had his house, from one year’s end
to another, as full of company as ever it could hold, and
fuller; for rather than be left out of the parties at Castle
Rackrent, many gentlemen, and those men of the first con-
sequence and landed estates in the country—such as the
O’Neills of Ballynagrotty, and the Moneygawls of Mount
Juliet’s Town, and O’Shannons of New Town Tullyhog—
made it their choice, often and often, when there was no
room to be had for love nor money, in long winter nights,
to sleep in the chicken-house, which Sir Patrick had fitted
up for the purpose of accommodating his friends and the
public in general, who honored him with their company un-
expectedly at Castle Rackrent; and this went on I can’t
tell you how long.
The whole country rang with his praises !—Long life to
him! I’m sure I love to look upon his picture, now op-
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 997
posite to me; though I never saw him, he must have been
a portly gentleman—his neck something short, and re-
markable for the largest pimple on his nose, which, by his
particular desire, is still extant in his picture, said to be
a striking likeness, though taken when young. He is said
also to be the inventor of raspberry whisky, which is very
likely, as nobody has ever appeared to dispute it with him,
and as there still exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle
Rackrent, in the garret, with an inscription to that effect—
a great curiosity. A few days before his death he was very
merry; it being his honor’s birthday, he called my grand-
father in—God bless him !—to drink the company’s health,
and filled a bumper himself, but could not carry it to his
head, on account of the great shake in his hand; on this he
cast his joke, saying: “ What would my poor father say to
me if he was to pop out of the grave, and see me now? I
remember when I was a little boy, the first bumper of
claret he gave me after dinner, how he praised me for
carrying it so steady to my mouth. Here’s my thanks to
him—a bumper toast.” Then he fell to singing the favorite
song he learned from his father—for the last time, poor
gentleman—he sung it that night as loud and as hearty
as ever, with a chorus:
“ He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do, falls as the leaves do, and dies in Oc-
tober;
But he that goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
Lives as he ought to do, lives as he ought to do, and dies an
- honest fellow.”
Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to
drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort
of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were sur-
prised, on inquiry in the morning, to find that it was all
over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman live
and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His
funeral was such a one as was never known before or since
in the county! All the gentlemen in the three counties
were at it; far and near, how they flocked! my great-grand-
father said, that to see all the women, even in their red
cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out.
Then such a fine whillaluh! vou might have heard it to the
998 IRISH LITERATURE.
farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could
get but a sight of the hearse!
But who’d have thought it? Just as all was going on
right, through his own town they were passing, when the
body was seized for debt—a rescue was apprehended from
the mob; but the heir, who attended the funeral, was
against that, for fear of consequences, seeing that those
villains who came to serve acted under the disguise of the
law: so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little
gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost,
they had the curses of the country: and Sir Murtagh Rack-
rent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this
affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts,
in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of .
property, and others of his acquaintance; Sir Murtagh al-
leging in all companies that he had all along meant to pay
his father’s debts of honor, but the moment the law was
taken of him, there was an end of honor to be sure. It was
whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believe
it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts
which he had bound himself to pay in honor.
It’s a long time ago, there’s no saying how it was, but
this for certain, the new man did not take at all after the
old gentleman ; the cellars were never filled after his death,
and no open house, or anything as it used to be: the ten-
ants even were sent away without their whisky. I was
ashamed myself, and knew not what to say for the honor
of the family; but I made the best of a bad case, and laid it
all at my lady’s door, for I did not like her anyhow, nor
anybody else; she was of the family of the Skinflints, and a
widow; it was a strange match for Sir Murtagh; the people
in the country thought he demeaned himself greatly, but I
said nothing: I knew how it was. Sir Murtagh was a great
lawyer, and looked to the great Skinflint estate; there,
however, he overshot himself; for, though one of the co-
heiresses, he was never the better for her, for she outlived
him many’s the long day—he could not see that to be sure
when he married her. I must say for her, she made him the
best of wives, being a very notable, stirring woman, and
looking close to everything. But I always suspected she
had Scotch blood in her veins; anything else I could have
looked over in her from a regard to the family. She was
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 999
a strict observer for self and servants of Lent and all fast
days, but not holidays. One of the maids having fainted
three times the last day of Lent, to keep soul and body to-
gether we put a morsel of roast beef into her mouth, which
came from Sir Murtagh’s dinner, who never fasted, not he;
but somehow or other it unfortunately reached my lady’s
ears, and the priest of the parish had a complaint made of
it the next day, and the poor girl was forced, as soon as
she could walk, to do penance for it, before she could get
any peace or absolution, in the house or out of it.
However, my lady was very charitable in her own way.
She had a charity school for poor children, where they
were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were
kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she
had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got
all her household linen out of the estate from first to last;
for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in
hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady’s interest
could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis. Then
there was a bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse
my lady nothing, for fear of a lawsuit Sir Murtagh kept
hanging over him about the watercourse. With these
ways of managing, ’t is surprising how cheap my lady got
things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table the
same way, kept for next to nothing; duty fowls, and duty
turkeys, and duty geese, came as fast as we could eat ’em,
for my lady kept a sharp lookout, and knew to a tub of
butter everything the tenants had, all round. They knew
her way, and what with fear of driving for rent and Sir
Murtagh’s lawsuits, they were kept in such good order,
they never thought of coming near Castle Rackrent with-'
out a present of something or other—nothing too much or
too little for my lady—eggs, honey, butter, meal, fish,
game, grouse, and herrings, fresh or salt, all went for
something. As for their young pigs, we had them, and the
best bacon and hams they could make up, with all young
chickens in spring; but they were a set of poor wretches,
and we had nothing but misfortunes with them, always
breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my
lady said, was all their former landlord Sir Patrick’s fault,
who let ’em all get the half-year’s rent into arrear: there
was something in that to be sure.
1000 . IRISH LITERATURE.
But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let
alone making English tenants of them, every soul, he was
always driving and driving, and pounding and pounding,
and canting and canting, and replevying and replevying,
and he made a good living of trespassing cattle; there was
always some tenant’s pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose,
trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that
he did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then
his heriots and duty-work brought him in something, his
turf was cut, his potatoes set and dug, his hay brought
home, and, in short, all the work about his house done for
nothing: for in all our leases there were strict clauses
heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how
to enforce; so many days’ duty work of man and horse,
from every tenant, he was to have, and had, every year;
and when a man vexed him, why the finest day he could
pitch on, when the cratur was getting in his own harvest,
or thatching his cabin, Sir Murtagh made it a principle to
call upon him and his horse: so he taught ’em all, as he
said, to know the law of landlord and tenant. As for law,
I believe no man, dead or alive, ever loved it so well as Sir
Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a time,
and I never saw him so much himself: roads, lanes, bogs,
wells, ponds, eel-wires, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants,
gravel-pits, sandpits, dunghills, and nuisances, everything
upon the face of the earth furnished him good matter for a
suit. He used to boast that he had a lawsuit for every
letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see Sir
Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office! Why, he
could hardly turn about for them. I made bold to shrug
my shoulders once in his presence, and thanked my stars I
was not born a gentleman to so much toil and trouble,
but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old proverb,
“ Learning is better than house or land.”
Out of forty-nine suits which he had, he never lost one
but seventeen; the rest he gained with costs, double costs,
treble costs sometimes; but even that did not pay. He was
a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it;
but how it was I can’t tell, these suits that he carried cost
him a power of money: in the end he sold some hundreds
a year of the family estate; but he was a very learned man
in the law, and I know nothing of the matter, except hav-
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1001
ing a great regard for the family; and I could not help
grieving when he sent me to post up notices of the sale of
the fee simple of the lands and appurtenances of Timo-
league.
“ I know, honest Thady,” says he, to comfort me, “ what
I’m about better than you do; I’m only selling to get the
ready money wanting to carry on my suit with spirit with
the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin.”
He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents
of Carrickashaughlin. He could have gained it, they say,
for certain, had it pleased Heaven to have spared him to
us, and it would have been at the least a plump two thou-
sand a year in his way; but things were ordered otherwise
—for the best to be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount against
my advice, and had no luck afterwards. Though a learned
man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other
matters. I warned him that I heard the very Banshee that
my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick’s window a few
days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought nothing
of the Banshee, nor of his cough, with a spitting of blood,
brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending
the courts, and overstraining his chest with making him-
self heard in one of his favorite causes. He was a great
speaker, with a powerful voice; but his last speech was not
in the courts at all. He and my lady, though both of the
same way of thinking in some things, and though she was
as good a wife and great economist as you could see, and he
the best of husbands, as to looking into his affairs, and
making money for his family; yet I don’t know how it was,
they had a great deal of sparring and jarring between
them.
My lady had her privy purse; and she had her weed
ashes, and her sealing money upon the signing of all the
leases, with something to buy gloves besides; and, besides,
again often took money from the tenants, if offered prop-
erly, to speak for them to Sir Murtagh about abatements
and renewals. Now the weed ashes and the glove money
he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when he saw
her in a new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her
to my face (for he could say a sharp thing) that she should
not put on her weeds before her husband’s death. But ina
dispute about an abatement my lady would have the last
1002 IRISH LITERATURE.
word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad; I was within hearing of
the door, and now I wish I had made bold to step in. He
spoke so loud, the whole kitchen was out on the stairs. All
on a sudden he stopped, and my lady too. Something has
surely happened, thought I; and so it was, for Sir Murtagh
in his passion broke a blood-vessel, and all the law in the
land could do nothing in that case. My lady sent for five
physicians, but Sir Murtagh died and was buried. She had
a fine jointure settled upon her, and took herself away, to
the great joy of the tenantry. I never said anything one
way or the other, whilst she was part of the family, but
got up to see her go at three o’clock in the morning.
“It’s a fine morning, honest Thady,” says she; “ good-
bye to ye.” And into the carriage she stepped, without a
word more, good or bad, or even half-a-crown; but I made
my bow, and stood to see her safe out of sight for the sake
of the family.
Then we were all bustle in the house, which made me
keep out of the way, for I walk slow and hate a bustle; but
the house was all hurry-skurry, preparing for my new mas-
ter. Sir Murtagh, I forgot to notice, had no childer; so
the Rackrent estate went to his younger brother, a young
dashing officer, who came amongst us before I knew for the
life of me whereabouts I was, in a gig or some of them
things, with another spark along with him, and led horses,
and servants, and dogs, and scarce a place to put any
Christian of them into; for my late lady had sent all the
feather-beds off before her, and blankets and household
linen, down to the very knife-cloths, on the cars to Dublin,
which were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own
money. So the house was quite bare, and my young mas-
ter, the moment ever he set foot in it out of his gig, thought
all those things must come of themselves, I believe, for he
never looked after anything at all, but harum-scarum
called for everything as if we were conjurers, or he in a
public-house. For my part, I could not bestir myself any-
how; I had been so much used to my late master and mis-
tress, all was upside down with me, and the new servants
in the servants’ hall were quite out of my way; I had no-
body to talk to, and if it had not been for my pipe and
tobacco, should, I verily believe, have broke my heart for
poor Sir Murtagh.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1003
But one morning my new master caught a glimpse of me
as I was looking at his horse’s heels, in hopes of a word
from him. “And is that old Thady?” says he, as he got
into his gig; I loved him from that day to this, his voice
was 80 like the family; and he threw me a guinea out of his
waistcoat pocket, as he drew up the reins with the other
hand, his horse rearing too; I thought I never set my eyes
on a finer figure of a man, quite another sort from Sir
Murtagh, though withal, to me, a family likeness. A fine
life we should have led, had he stayed amongst us, God
bless him! He valued a guinea as little as any man; money
to him was no more than dirt, and his gentleman and
groom, and all belonging to him, the same; but the sport-
ing season over, he grew tired of the place, and having got
down a great architect for the house, and an improver for
the grounds, and seen their plans and elevations, he fixed
a day for settling with the tenants, but went off in a
whirlwind to town, just as some of them came into the
yard in the morning. 7
A circular-letter came next post from the new agent,
with news that the master was sailed for England, and he
must remit £500 to Bath for his use before a fortnight was
at an end; bad news still for the poor tenants, no change
still for the better with them. Sir Kit Rackrent, my young
master, left all to the agent; and though he had the spirit
of a prince, and lived away to the honor of his country
abroad, which I was proud to hear of, what were we the
better for that at home? The agent was one of your mid-
dlemen, who grind the face of the poor, and can never bear
aman with a hat upon his head ; he ferreted the tenants out
of their lives; not a week without a call for money, drafts
upon drafts from Sir Kit; but I laid it all to the fault of
the agent, for, says I, what can Sir Kit do with so much
cash, and he a single man? But still it went. Rents must
be all paid up to the day, and afore; no allowance for im-
proving tenants, no consideration for those who had built
upon their farms; no sooner was a lease out but the land
was advertised to the highest bidder; all the old tenants
turned out, when they spent their substance in the hope
and trust of a renewal from the landlord. All was now
let at the highest penny to a parcel of poor wretches, who
meant to run away, and did so after taking two crops out
1004 IRISH LITERATURE.
of the ground. Then fining down the year’s rent came into
fashion—anything for the ready penny; and with all this
and presents to the agent and the driver, there was no such
thing as standing it. I said nothing, for I had a regard for
the family, but I walked about thinking if his honor Sir
Kit knew all this, it would go hard with him but he ’d see
us righted; not that I had anything for my own share to
complain of, for the agent was always very civil to me
when he came down into the country, and took a great deal
of notice of my son Jason.
Jason Quirk, though he be my son, I must say was a good
scholar from his birth, and a very ’cute lad; I thought to
make him a priest, but he did better for himself; seeing how
he was as good a clerk as any in the country, the agent gave
him his rent accounts to copy, which he did first of all for
the pleasure of obliging the gentleman, and would take
nothing at all for his trouble, but was always proud to
serve the family. By and by a good farm bounding us to
the east fell into his honor’s hands, and my son put in a
proposal for it; why shouldn’t he, as well as another? The
proposals all went over to the master at Bath, who
knowing no more of the land than the child unborn, only
having once been out a-grousing on it before he went to
England; and the value of lands, as the agent informed
him, falling every year in Ireland, his honor wrote over in
all haste a bit of a letter, saying he left it all to the agent,
and that he must let it as well as he could—to the best
bidder, to be sure—and send him over £200 by return of
post; with this the agent gave me a hint, and I spoke a
good word for my son, and gave out in the country that
nobody need bid against us. So his proposal was just the
thing, and he a good tenant, and he got a promise of an
abatement in the rent after the first year, for advancing
the half-year’s rent at signing the lease, which was wanting
to complete the agent’s £200 by the return of the post, with
all which my master wrote back he was well satisfied.
About this time we learnt from the agent, as a great
secret, how the money went so fast, and the reason of the
thick coming of the master’s drafts : he was a little too fond
of play, and Bath, they say, was no place for a young man
of his fortune, where there were so many of his own coun-
trymen, too, hunting him up and down day and night, who
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1005
had nothing to lose. At last, at Christmas, the agent wrote
over to stop the drafts, for he could raise no more money on
bond or mortgage, or from the tenants, or anyhow, nor had
he any more to lend himself, and desired at the same time
to decline the agency for the future, wishing Sir Kit his
health and happiness, and the compliments of the season,
for I saw the letter before ever it was sealed, when my son
copied it. When the answer came there was a new turn
in affairs, and the agent was turned out, and my son Jason,
who had corresponded privately with his honor occasion-
ally on business, was forthwith desired by his honor to take
the accounts into his own hands, and look them over, till
further orders. It was a very spirited letter to be sure; Sir
Kit sent his service, and the compliments of the season, in
return to the agent, and he would fight him with pleasure
to-morrow, or any day, for sending him such a letter, if he
was born a gentleman, which he was sorry (for both their
sakes) to find (too late) he was not. Then, in a private
Postscript, he condescended to tell us that all would be
speedily settled to his satisfaction, and we should turn
over a new leaf, for he was going to be married in a fort-
night to the grandest heiress in England, and had only
immediate occasion at present for £200, as he would not
choose to touch his lady’s fortune for traveling expenses
home to Castle Rackrent, where he intended to be, wind
and weather permitting, early in the next month; and de-
sired fires, and the house to be painted, and the new build-
ing to go on as fast as possible, for the reception of him
and his lady before that time; with several words besides
in the letter, which we could not make out, because, God
bless him! he wrote in such a flurry.
My heart warmed to my new lady when I read this: I
was almost afraid it was too good news to be true; but the
girls fell to scouring, and it was well they did, for we soon
saw his marriage in the paper, to a lady with I don’t know
how many tens of thousands pounds to her fortune; then
I watched the post-office for his landing; and the news
came to my son of his and the bride being in Dublin, and
on their way home to Castle Rackrent. We had bonfires
all over the country, expecting him down the next day, and
we had his coming of age still to celebrate, which he had
not time to do properly before he left the country; there-
1006 IRISH LITERATURE.
fore, a great ball was expected, and great doings upon his
coming, as it were, fresh to take possession of his ancestors’
estate. I never shall forget the day he came home; we had
waited and waited all day long till eleven o’clock at night,
and I was thinking of sending the boy to lock the gates, and
giving them up for that night, when there came the car-
riages thundering up to the great hall-door. I got the
first sight of the bride; for when the carriage door opened,
just as she had her foot on the steps, I held the flame full
in her face to light her, at which she shut her eyes, but I
had a full view of the rest of her, and greatly shocked I
was, for by that light she was little better than a blacka-
moor, and seemed crippled; but that was only sitting so
long in the chariot.
“You ’re kindly welcome to Castle Rackrent, my lady,”
says I (recollecting who she was). “Did your honor hear
of the bonfires? ”
His honor spoke never a word, nor so much as handed
her up the steps—he looked to me no more like himself
than nothing at all; I know I took him for the skeleton of
his honor. I was not sure what to say to one or t’ other,
but seeing she was a stranger in a foreign country, I
thought it but right to speak cheerful to her; so I went
back again to the bonfires.
“ My lady,” says I, as she crossed the hall, “ there would
have been fifty times as many; but for fear of the horses,
and frightening your ladyship, Jason and I forbid them,
please your honor.”
“Will I have a fire lighted in the state-room to-night?”
was the next question I put to her, but never a word she
answered; so I concluded she could not speak a word of
English, and was from foreign parts. The short and the
long of it was, I couldn’t tell what to make of her; so I left
her to herself, and went straight down to the servants’ hall
to learn something for certain about her. Sir Kit’s own
man was tired, but the grooms set him a-talking at last,
and we had it all out before ever I closed my eyes that
night. The bride might well be a great fortune—she was
a Jewish by all accounts, who are famous for their great
riches. I had never seen any of that tribe or nation before,
and could only gather that she spoke a strange kind of
English of her own, that she could not abide pork or sau-
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1007
sages, and went neither to church nor mass. Mercy upon
his honor’s poor soul, thought 1; what will become of him
and his, and all of us, with his heretic blackamoor at the
head of the Castle Rackrent estate? I never slept a wink
all night for thinking of it; but before the servants I put
my pipe in my mouth, and kept my mind to myself, for I
had a great regard for the family; and after this, when
strange gentlemen’s servants came to the house, and would
begin to talk about the bride, I took care to put the best
foot foremost, and passed her for a nabob in the kitchen,
which accounted for her dark complexion and everything.
The very morning after they came home, however, I saw
plain enough how things were between Sir Kit and my lady,
though they were walking together arm in arm after break-
fast, looking at the new building and the improvements.
“Old Thady,” said my master, just as he used to do,
“how do you do?”
“Very well, I thank your honor’s honor,” said I; but I
saw he was not well pleased, and my heart was in my mouth
as I walked along after him.
“Ts the large room damp, Thady? ” said his honor.
“Oh, damp, your honor! how should it be but as dry as
a bone,” says I, “ after all the fires we have kept in it day
and night? It’s the barrack-room your honor’s talking
on.”
“ And what is a barrack-room, pray, my dear? ” were the
first words I ever heard out of my lady’s lips.
“No matter, my dear,” said he, and went on talking to
me, ashamed-like I should witness her ignorance. To be
sure, to hear her talk one might have taken her for an in-
nocent, for it was, “ What’s this, Sir Kit? ” and “ What ’s
that, Sir Kit?” all the way we went. To be sure, Sir
Kit had enough to do to answer her.
“ And what do you call that, Sir Kit?” said she; “ that—
that looks like a pile of black bricks, pray, Sir Kit?”
“My turf-stack, my dear,” said my master, and bit his
lip.
Where have you lived, my lady, all your life, not to know
a turf-stack when you sce it? thought I; but I said nothing.
Then, by-and-by, she takes out her glass, and begins spying
over the country.
1008 IRISH LIITERATURE.
“And what’s all that black swamp out yonder, Sir
Kit?” says she.
“ My bog, my dear,” says he, and went on whistling.
“It’s a very ugly prospect, my dear,” says she.
“ You don’t see it, my dear,” says he; “ for we ’ve planted
it out; when the trees grow up in summer-time—” says he.
“ Where are the trees,” said she, “ my dear?” still look-
ing through her glass.
“You are blind, my dear,” says he: “what are these
under your eyes?”
“ These shrubs? ” said she.
“ Trees,” said he.
“Maybe they are what you call trees in Ireland, my
dear,” said she; “ but they are not a yard high, are they?”
“They were planted out but last year, my lady,” says I,
to soften matters between them, for I saw she was going the
way to make his honor mad with her: “ they are very well
grown for their age, and you ’1l not see the bog of Allybally-
carricko’shaughlin at-all-at-all through the skreen, when
once the leaves come out. But, my lady, you must not
quarrel with any part or parcel of Allyballycarricko’-
shaughlin, for you don’t know how many hundred years
that same bit of bog has been in the family; we would not
part with the bog of Allyballycarricko’shaughlin upon no
account at all; it cost the late Sir Murtagh two hundred
good pounds to defend his title to it and boundaries against
the O’Learys, who cut a road through it.”
Now one would have thought this would have been hint
enough for my lady, but she fell to laughing like one out of
their right mind, and made me say the name of the bog over,
for her to get it by heart, a dozen times; then she must ask
me how to spell it, and what was the meaning of it in
English—Sir Kit standing by whistling all the while. I
verily believed she laid the corner-stone of all her future
misfortunes at that very instant; but I said no more, only
looked at Sir Kit.
There were no balls, no dinners, no doings; the country
was all disappointed—Sir Kit’s gentleman said in a whis-
per to me, it was all my lady’s own fault, because she was
go obstinate about the cross.
“ What cross?” says I; “is it about her being a her-
etic?”
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1009
“Oh, no such matter,” says he; “my master does not
mind her heresies, but her diamond cross—it’s worth I
can’t tell you how much, and she has thousands of English
pounds concealed in diamonds about her, which she as good
as promised to give up to my master before he married;
but now she won’t part with any of them, and she must
take the consequences.”
Her honeymoon, at least her Irish honeymoon, was
scarcely well over, when his honor one morning said to me,
“Thady, buy me a pig!” and then the sausages were or-
dered, and here was the first open breaking-out of my lady’s
troubles. My lady came down herself into the kitchen to
speak to the cook about the sausages, and desired never to
see them more at her table. Now my master had ordered
them, and my lady knew that. The cook took my lady’s
part, because she never came down into the kitchen, and
was young and innocent in housekeeping, which raised her
pity; besides, said she, at her own table, surely my lady
should order and disorder what she pleases. But the cook
soon changed her note, for my master made it a principle
to have the sausages, and swore at her for a Jew herself,
till he drove her fairly out of the kitchen; then, for fear
of her place, and because he threatened that my lady should
give her no discharge without the sausages, she gave up,
and from that day forward always sausages, or bacon, or
pig-meat in some shape or other, went up to table; upon
which my lady shut herself up in her own room, and my
master said she might stay there, with an oath; and to
make sure of her, he turned the key in the door, and kept
it ever after in his pocket. We none of us ever saw or
heard her speak for seven years after that: he carried her
dinner himself. Then his honor had a great deal of com-
pany to dine with him, and balls in the house, and was as
gay and gallant, and as much himself as before he was
married; and at dinner he always drank my Lady Rack-
rent’s good health and so did the company, and he sent out
always a servant with his compliments to my Lady Rack-
rent, and the company was drinking her ladyship’s health,
and begged to know if there was anything at table he might
send her, and the man came back, after the sham errand,
with my Lady Rackrent’s compliments, and she was very
&
1010 IRISH LITERATURE.
much obliged to Sir Kit—she did not wish for anything,
but drank the company’s health.
The country, to be sure, talked and wondered at my
lady’s being shut up, but nobody chose to interfere or ask
any impertinent questions, for they knew my master was
a man very apt to give a short answer himself, and likely
to call a man out for it afterwards: he was a famous shot,
had killed his man before he came of age, and nobody
scarce dared look at him whilst at Bath. Sir Kit’s char-
acter was so well known in the country that he lived in
peace and quietness ever after, and was a great favorite
with the ladies, especially when in process of time, in the
fifth year of her confinement, my Lady Rackrent fell ill and
took entirely to her bed, and he gave out she was now skin
and bone, and could not last through the winter. In this
he had two physicians’ opinions to back him (for now he
called in two physicians for her), and tried all his arts to
get the diamond cross from her on her deathbed, and to get
her to make a will in his favor of her separate possessions,
but there she was too tough for him. He used to swear at
her behind her back after kneeling to her face, and call her
in the presence of his gentleman his stiff-necked Israelite,
though before he married her that same gentleman told me
he used to call her (how he would bring it out, I don’t
know) “my pretty Jessica!” To be sure it must have been
hard for her to guess what sort of a husband he reckoned
to make her.
When she was lying, to all expectation, on her deathbed
of a broken heart, I could not but pity her, though she was
a Jewish, and considering too it was no fault of hers to be
taken with my master, so young as she was at the Bath,
and so fine a gentleman as Sir Kit was when he courted
her ; and considering too, after all they had heard and seen
of him as a husband, there were now no less than three
ladies in our county talked of for his second wife, all at
daggers drawn with each other, as his gentleman swore,
at the balls, for Sir Kit for their partner—I could not but
think them bewitched, but they all reasoned with them-
selves that Sir Kit would make a good husband to any
Christian but a Jewish, I suppose, and especially as he
was now a reformed rake; and it was not known how my
lady’s fortune was settled in her will, nor how the Castle
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1011
Rackrent estate was all mortgaged, and bonds out against
him, for he was never cured of his gaming tricks; but that
was the only fault he had, God bless him!
My lady had a sort of fit, and it was given out that she
was dead, by mistake; this brought things to a sad crisis
for my poor master. One of the three ladies showed his
letters to her brother, and claimed his promises, whilst
another did the same. I don’t mention names. Sir Kit, in
his defense, said he would meet any man who dared to
question his conduct; and as to the ladies, they must settle
it amongst them who was to be his second, and his third,
and his fourth, whilst his first was still alive, to his morti-
fication and theirs. Upon this, as upon all former occa-
sions, he had the voice of the country with him, on account
of the great spirit and propriety he acted with. He met
and shot the first lady’s brother; the next day he called
out the second, who had a wooden leg, and their place of
meeting by appointment being in a new-ploughed field, the
wooden-leg man stuck fast in it. Sir Kit, seeing his situa-
tion, with great candor fired his pistol over his head; upon
which the seconds interposed, and convinced the parties
there had been a slight misunderstanding between them;
thereupon they shook hands cordially, and went home to
dinner together. This gentleman, to show the world how
they stood together, and by the advice of the friends of both
parties, to re-establish his sister’s injured reputation, went
out with Sir Kit as his second, and carried his message
next day to the last of his adversaries.
I never saw him in such fine spirits as that day he went
out—sure enough he was within an ace of getting quit
handsomely of all his enemies; but unluckily, after hitting
the tooth-pick out of his adversary’s finger and thumb, he
received a ball in a vital part, and was brought home, in
little better than an hour after the affair, speechless on a
hand-barrow to my lady. We got the key out of his pocket
the first thing we did, and my son Jason ran to unlock the
barrack-room, where my lady had been shut up for seven
years, to acquaint her with the fatal accident. The sur-
prise bereaved her of her senses at first, nor would she be-
lieve but we were putting some new trick upon her, to
entrap her out of her jewels, for a great while, till Jason
bethought himself of taking her to the window, and showed
1012 IRISH LITERATURE.
her the men bringing Sir Kit up the avenue upon the hand-
barrow, which had immediately the desired effect; for di-
rectly she burst into tears, and pulling her cross from her
bosom, she kissed it with as great devotion as ever I wit-
nessed, and lifting up her eyes to heaven uttered some ejac-
ulation which none present heard; but I take the sense of
it to be, she returned thanks for this unexpected inter-
position in her favor when she had least reason to expect
it. My master was greatly lamented: there was no life in
him when we lifted him off the barrow, so he was laid out
immediately, and “ waked” the same night. The country
was all in an uproar about him, and not a soul but cried
shame upon his murderer, who would have been hanged
surely, if he could have been brought to his trial, whilst the
gentlemen in the country were up about it; but he very
prudently withdrew himself to the Continent before the
affair was made public. As for the young lady who was the
immediate cause of the fatal accident, however innocently,
she could never show her head after at the balls in the
county or any place; and by the advice of her friends and
physicians she was ordered soon after to Bath, where it
was expected, if anywhere on this side of the grave, she
would meet with the recovery of her health and lost peace
of mind. As a proof of his great popularity, I need only
add that there was a song made upon my master’s untimely
death in the newspapers, which was in everybody’s mouth,
singing up and down through the country, even down to
the mountains, only three days after his unhappy exit. He
was also greatly bemoaned at the Curragh, where his cattle
were well known; and all who had taken up his bets were
particularly inconsolable for his loss to society. His stud
sold at the cant at the greatest price ever known in
the county; his favorite horses were chiefly disposed of
amongst his particular friends, who would give any price
for them, for his sake; but no ready money was required
by the new heir, who wished not to displease any of the
gentlemen of the neighborhood just upon his coming to
settle amongst them; so a long credit was given where
requisite, and the cash has never been gathered in from
that day to this.
But to return to my lady. She got surprisingly well
after my master’s decease. No sooner was it known for
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1013
certain that he was dead, than all the gentlemen within
twenty miles of us came in a body, as it were, to set my
lady at liberty, and to protest against her confinement,
which they now for the first time understood was against
her own consent. The ladies too were as attentive as pos-
sible, striving who should be foremost with their morning
visits; and they that saw the diamonds spoke very hand-
somely of them, but thought it a pity they were not be-
stowed, if it had so pleased God, upon a lady who would
have become them better. All these civilities wrought
little with my lady, for she had taken an unaccountable
prejudice against the country, and everything belonging
to it, and was so partial to her native land, that after
parting with the cook, which she did immediately upon
my master’s decease, I never knew her easy one instant,
night or day, but when she was packing up to leave us.
Had she meant to make any stay in Ireland, I stood a great
chance of being a great favorite with her; for when she
found I understood the weathercock, she was always find-
ing some pretense to be talking to me, and asking me which
way the wind blew, and was it likely, did I think, to con-
tinue fair for England.
But when I saw she had made up her mind to spend the
rest of her days upon her own income and jewels in Eng-
land, I considered her quite as a foreigner, and not at all
any longer as part of the family. She gave no veils to the
servants at Castle Rackrent at parting, notwithstanding
the old proverb of “as rich as a Jew,” which, she being a
Jewish, they built upon with reason. But from first to last
she brought nothing but misfortune amongst us; and if it
had not been all along with her, his honor, Sir Kit, would
have been now alive in all appearance. Her diamond cross
was, they say, at the bottom of it all; and it was a shame
for her, being his wife, not to show more duty, and to have
given it up when he condescended to ask so often for such
a bit of a trifle in his distresses, especially when he all
along made it no secret he married for money. But we
will not bestow another thought upon her. This much I
thought it lay upon my conscience to say, in justice to my
poor master’s memory.
?T is an ill wind that blows nobody no good; the same
1014 IRISH LITERATURE.
wind that took the Jew Lady Rackrent over to England
brought over the new heir to Castle Rackrent.
Here let me pause for breath in my story, for though I
had a great regard for every member of the family, yet
without compare Sir Conolly, commonly called, for short,
amongst his friends, Sir Condy Rackrent, was ever my
great favorite; and indeed, the most universally beloved
man I had ever seen or heard of, not excepting his great
ancestor Sir Patrick, to whose memory he, amongst other
instances of generosity, erected a handsome marble stone
in the church of Castle Rackrent, setting forth in large
letters his age, birth, parentage, and many other virtues,
concluding with the compliment so justly due, that “ Sir
Patrick Rackrent lived and died a moniment of old Irish
hospitality.”
CONTINUATION OF THE MEMOIRS OF THE
RACKRENT FAMILY.
HISTORY OF SIR CONOLLY RACKRENT.
Sir Condy Rackrent by the grace of God heir-at-law
to the Castle Rackrent estate was a remote branch of the
family. Born to little or no fortune of his own, he was
bred to the bar, at which, having many friends to push
him end no mean natural abilities of his own, he doubtless
would in process of time, if he could have borne the drudg-
ery of that study, have been rapidly made King’s Counsel
at the least, but things were disposed of otherwise, and he
never went the circuit but twice, and then made no figure
for want of a fee and being unable to speak in public. He
received his education chiefly in the College of Dublin, but
before he came to years of discretion lived in the country,
in a small but slated house within view of the end of the
avenue. I remember him, bare-footed and headed, running
through the street of O’Shaughlin’s Town, and playing at
pitch-and-toss, ball, marbles, and what not, with the boys
of the town, amongst whom my son Jason was a great fa-
vorite with him. As for me, he was ever my white-headed
boy; often ’s the time, when I would call in at his father’s,
where I was always made welcome, he would slip down to
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1015
me in the kitchen, and love to sit on my knee whilst I told
him stories of the family and the blood from which he was
sprung, and how he might look forward, if the then present
man should die without children, to being at the head of
the Castle Rackrent estate.
This was then spoke quite and clear, at random to please
the child, but it pleased Heaven to accomplish my prophecy
afterwards, which gave him a great opinion of my judg-
ment in business. He went to a little grammar-school with
many others, and my son amongst the rest, who was in his
class, and not a little useful to him in his book-learning,
which he acknowledged with gratitude ever after. These
rudiments of his education thus completed, he got a-horse-
back, to which exercise he was ever addicted, and used to
gallop over the country while yet but a slip of a boy, under
the care of Sir Kit’s huntsman, who was very fond of him,
and often lent him his gun, and took him out a-shooting
under his own eye. By these means he became well ac-
quainted and popular amongst the poor in the neighbor-
hood early, for there was not a cabin at which he had not
stopped some morning or other, along with the huntsman,
to drink a glass of burnt whisky out of an egg-shell, to do
him good and warm his heart and drive the cold out of his
stomach. The old people always told him he was a great
likeness of Sir Patrick, which made him first have an ambi-
tion to take after him, as far as his fortune should allow.
He left us when of an age to enter the college, and there
completed his education and nineteenth year, for as he was
not born to an estate, his friends thought it incumbent on
them to give him the best education which could be had for
love or money, and a great deal of money consequently was
spent upon him at College and Temple. He was a very
little altered for the worse by what he saw there of the
great world, for when he came down into the country to
pay us a visit, we thought him just the same man as ever—
hand and glove with every one, and as far from high,
though not without his own proper share of family pride,
as any man ever you see.
Latterly, seeing how Sir Kit and the Jewish lived to-
gether, and that there was no one between him and the
Castle Rackrent estate, he neglected to apply to the law as
much as was expected of him, and secretly many of the
1016 IRISH LITERATURE.
tenants and others advanced him cash upon his note of
hand value received, promising bargains of leases and law-
ful interest, should he ever come into the estate. All this
was kept a great secret for fear the present man, hearing of
it, should take it into his head to take it ill of poor Condy,
and so should cut him off for ever by levying a fine, and
suffering a recovery to dock the entail. Sir Murtagh would
have been the man for that; but Sir Kit was too much taken
up philandering to consider the law in this case, or any
other. These practices I have mentioned to account for the
state of his affairs—I mean Sir Condy’s upon his coming
into the Castle Rackrent estate. He could not command
a penny of his first year’s income, which, and keeping no
accounts, and the great sight of company he did, with many
other causes too numerous to mention, was the origin of
his distresses.
My son Jason, who was now established agent, and knew
everything, explained matters out of the face to Sir Con-
olly, and made him sensible of his embarrassed situation.
With a great nominal rent-roll, it was almost all paid away
in interest; which being for convenience suffered to run
on, soon doubled the principal, and Sir Condy was obliged
to pass new bonds for the interest, now grown principal,
and so on. Whilst this was going on, my son, requiring to
be paid for his trouble and many years’ service in the fam-
ily gratis, and Sir Condy not willing to take his affairs into
” his own hands, or to look them even in the face, he gave
my son a bargain of some acres which fell out of lease at a
reasonable rent. Jason let the land, as soon as his lease was
sealed, to under-tenants, to make the rent, and got two
hundred a year profit rent; which was little enough con-
sidering his long agency. He bought the land at twelve
years’ purchase two years afterwards, when Sir Condy was
pushed for money on an execution, and was at the same
time allowed for his improvements thereon.
There was a sort of hunting-lodge upon the estate, con-
venient to my son Jason’s land, which he had his eye upon
about this time; and he was a little jealous of Sir Condy,
who talked of letting it to a stranger who was just come
into the country—Captain Moneygawl was the man. He
was son and heir to the Moneygawls of Mount Juliet’s
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1017
and my master was loth to disoblige the young gentleman,
whose heart was set upon the Lodge; so he wrote him back
that the Lodge was at his service, and if he would honor
him with his company at Castle Rackrent, they could ride
over together some morning and look at it before signing
the lease. Accordingly, the captain came over to us, and
he and Sir Condy grew the greatest friends ever you see,
and were for ever out a-shooting or hunting together, and
were very merry in the evenings; and Sir Condy was invited
of course to Mount Juliet’s Town; and the family intimacy
that had been in Sir Patrick’s time was now recollected,
and nothing would serve Sir Condy but he must be three
times a week at the least with his new friends, which
grieved me, who knew, by the captain’s groom and gentle-
man, how they talked of him at Mount Juliet’s Town, mak-
ing him quite, as one may say, a laughing-stock and a butt
for the whole company; but they were soon cured of that
by an accident that surprised ’em not a little, as it did me.
There was a bit of a scrawl found upon the waiting-maid
of old Mr. Moneygawl’s youngest daughter, Miss Isabella,
that laid open the whole; and her father, they say, was like
one out of his right mind, and swore it was the last thing
he ever should have thought of, when he invited my master
to his house, that his daughter should think of such a
match, But their talk signified not a straw, for as Miss
Isabella’s maid reported, her young mistress was fallen
over head and ears in love with Sir Condy from the first
time that ever her brother brought him into the house to
dinner. The servant who waited that day behind my mas-
ter’s chair was the first who knew it, as he says; though it’s
hard to believe him, for he did not tell it till a great while
afterwards; but, however, it ’s likely enough, as the thing
turned out, that he was not far out of the way, for towards
the middle of dinner, as he says, they were talking of stage-
plays, having a play-house, and being great play-actors at
Mount Juliet’s Town; and Miss Isabella turns short to my
master, and says:
“ Have you seen the play-bill, Sir Condy?”
“No, I have not,” said he.
“Then more shame for you,” said the captain her
brother, “ pot to know that my sister is to play Juliet to-
1018 IRISH LITERATURE.
night, who plays it better than any woman on or off the
stage in all Ireland.”
“JT am very happy to hear it,” said Sir Condy; and there
the matter dropped for the present.
But Sir Condy all this time, and a great while after-
ward, was at a terrible non-plus; for he had no liking, not
he, to stage-plays, nor to Miss Isabella either—to his mind,
as it came out over a bowl of whisky-punch at home, his
little Judy M’Quirk, who was daughter to a sister’s son of
mine, was worth twenty of Miss Isabella. He had seen her
often when he stopped at her father’s cabin to drink whisky
out of the egg-shell, out hunting, before he came to the es-
tate, and, as she gave out, was under something like a
promise of marriage to her. Anyhow, I could not but pity
my poor master, who was so bothered between them, and
he an easy-hearted man, that could not disoblige nobody—
God bless him! To be sure, it was not his place to behave
ungenerous to Miss Isabella, who had disobliged all her re-
lations for his sake, as he remarked; and then she was
locked up in her chamber, and forbid to think of him any
more, which raised his spirit, because his family was as
good as theirs at any rate, and the Rackrents a suitable
match for the Moneygawls any day in the year; all which
was true enough. But it grieved me to see that, upon the
strength of all this, Sir Condy was growing more in the
mind to carry off Miss Isabella to Scotland, in spite of her
relations, as she desired.
“It’s all over with our poor Judy!” said I, with a heavy
sigh, making bold to speak to him one night when he was a
little cheerful, and standing in the servants’ hall all alone
with me, as was often his custom.
“Not at all,” said he; “I never was fonder of Judy than
at this present speaking; and to prove it to you,” said he—
and he took from my hand a halfpenny change that I had
just got along with my tobacco—“ and to prove it to you,
Thady,” says he, “it’s a toss-up with me which I should
marry this minute, her or Mr. Moneygaw1 of Mount Juliet’s
Town’s daughter—so it is.”
“ Oh—boo! boo!” says I, making light of it, to see what
he would go on to next; “ your honor’s joking, to be sure;
there ’s no compare between our poor Judy and Miss Isa-
bella, who has a great fortune, they say.”
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1019
“T’m not a man to mind a fortune, nor never was,” said
Sir Condy, proudly, “ whatever her friends may say; and
to make short of it,” says he, “I’m come to a determination
upon the spot.” With that he swore such a terrible oath as
made me cross myself. “ And by this book,” said he,
snatching up my ballad-book, mistaking it for my prayer-
book, which lay in the window; “and by this book,” says
he, “and by all the books that ever were shut and opened,
it’s come to a toss-up with me, and I II stand or fall by the
toss; and so Thady, hand me over that pin out of the ink-
horn”; and he makes a cross on the smooth side of the
halfpenny ; “ Judy M’Quirk,” says he, “ her mark.”
God bless him! his hand was a little unsteadied by all the
whisky-punch he had taken, but it was plain to see his
heart was for poor Judy. My heart was ail as one as in my
mouth when I saw the halfpenny up in the air, but I said
nothing at all; and when it came down I was glad I had
kept myself to myself, for to be sure now it was all over
with poor Judy.
“ Judy ’s out a luck,” said I, striving to laugh.
“T’m out a luck,” said he; and I never saw a man look
so cast down: he took up the halfpenny off the flag, and
walked away quite sober-like by the shock. Now, though
as easy @ man, you would think, as any in the wide world,
there was no such thing as making him unsay one of these
sort of vows, which he had learned to reverence when
young, as I well remember teaching him to toss up for bog-
berries on my knee. So I saw the affair was as good as
settled between him and Miss Isabella, and I had no more
to say but to wish her joy, which I did the week afterwards,
upon her return from Scotland with my poor master.
My new lady was young, as might be supposed of a lady
that had been carried off by her own consent to Scotland; .
but I could only see her at first through her veil, which,
from bashfulness or fashion, she kept over her face.
“ And am I to walk through all this crowd of people, my
dearest love? ” said she to Sir Condy, meaning us servants
and tenants, who had gathered at the back gate.
“My dear,” said Sir Condy, “ there ’s nothing for it but
to walk, or to let me carry you as far as the house, for you
see the back road is too narrow for a carriage, and the
1020 IRISH LITERATURE.
great piers have tumbled down across the front approach:
so there ’s no driving the right way, by reason of the ruins.”
“Plato, thou reasonest well!” said she, or words to that
effect, which I could noways understand ; and again, when
her foot stumbled against a broken bit of a car-wheel, she
cried out, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”
Well, thought I, to be sure, if she ’s no Jewish, like the last,
she is a mad-woman for certain, which is as bad: it would
have been as well for my poor master to have taken up with
poor Judy, who is in her right mind anyhow.
She was dressed like a mad-woman, moreover, more than
like any one I ever saw afore or since, and I could not take
my eyes off her, but still followed behind her; and her
feathers on the top of her hat were broke going in at the
low back door, and she pulled out her little bottle out of
her pocket to smell when she found herself in the kitchen,
and said, “I shall faint with the heat of this odious, odious
place.”
“My dear, it’s only three steps across the kitchen, and
there ’s a fine air if your veil was up,” said Sir Condy; and
with that threw back her veil, so that I had then a full
sight of her face. She had not at all the color of one going
to faint, but a fine complexion of her own, as I then took
it to be, though her maid told me after it was all put on;
but even, complexion and all taken in, she was no way, in
point of good looks, to compare to poor Judy, and withal
she had a quality toss with her; but maybe it was my over-
partiality to Judy, into whose place I may say she stepped,
that made me notice all this.
To do her justice, however, she was, when we came to
know her better, very liberal in her housekeeping—nothing
at all of the skinflint in her; she left everything to the
housekeeper, and her own maid, Mrs. Jane, who went with
her to Scotland, gave her the best of characters for gen-
erosity. She seldom or ever wore a thing twice the same
way, Mrs, Jane told us, and was always pulling her things
to pieces and giving them away, never being used, in her
father’s house, to think of expense in anything; and she
reckoned to be sure to go on the same way at Castle Rack-
rent; but when I came to inquire, I learned that her
father was so mad with her for running off, after his lock-
ing her up and forbidding her to think any more of Sir
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1021
Condy, that he would not give her a farthing; and it was
lucky for her she had a few thousands of her own, which
had been left to her by a good grandmother, and these were .
convenient to begin with.
My master and my lady set out in great style; they had
the finest coach and chariot, and horses and liveries, and
cut the greatest dash in the county, returning their wed-
ding visits; and it was immediately reported that her
father had undertaken to pay all my master’s debts, and of
course all his tradesmen gave him a new credit, and every
thing went on smack-smooth, and I could not but admire
my lady’s spirit, and was proud to see Castle Rackrent
again in all its glory. My lady had a fine taste for build-
ing, and furniture, and playhouses, and she turned every
thing topsy-turvy, and made the barrack-room into a thea-
ter, as she called it, and she went on as if she had a
mint of money at her elbow; and to be sure I thought she
knew best, especially as Sir Condy said nothing to it one
way or the other. All he asked, God bless him! was to live
in peace and quietness, and have his bottle or his whisky-
punch at night to himself. Now this was little enough, to
be sure, for any gentleman; but my lady couldn’t abide the
smell of the whisky-punch.
“ My dear,” says he, “ you liked it well enough before we
were married, and why not now?”
“ My dear,” said she, “I never smelt it, or I assure you I
should never have prevailed upon myself to marry you.”
“ My dear, I am sorry you did not smell it, but we can’t
help that now,” returned my master, without putting him-
self in a passion or going out of his way, but just fair and
easy helped himself to another glass, and drank it off to
her good health.
All this the butler told me, who was going backwards
and forwards unnoticed with the jug, and hot water and
sugar, and all he thought wanting. Upon my master’s
swallowing the last glass of whisky-punch, my lady burst
into tears, calling him an ungrateful, base, barbarous
wretch, and went off into a fit of hysterics, as I think Mrs.
Jane called it; and my poor master was greatly frightened,
this being the first thing of the kind he had seen, and he
fell straight on his knees before her, and, like a good-
hearted cratur as he was, ordered the whisky-punch out of
1022 IRISH LITERATURE.
the room, and bid ’em throw open all the windows, and
cursed himself; and then my lady came to herself again,
and when she saw him kneeling there, bid him get up, and
not forswear himself any more, for that she was sure he did
not love her, and never had. This we learned from Mrs.
Jane, who was the only person left present at all this.
“My dear,” returns my master, thinking, to be sure, of
Judy, as well he might, “ whoever told you so is an incen-
diary, and Ill have ’em turned out of the house this min-
ute, if you ll only let me know which of them it was.”
“Told me what?” said my lady, starting upright in her
chair.
“ Nothing at all, nothing at all,” said my master, seeing
he had overshot himself, and that my lady spoke at ran-
dom; “ but what you said just now, that I did not love you,
Bella; who told you that?”
“ My own sense,” she said, and she put her handkerchief
to her face and leant back upon Mrs. Jane, and fell to sob-
bing as if her heart would break.
“Why now, Bella, this is very strange of you,” said my
poor master; “if nobody has told you nothing, what is it
you are talking on for at this rate, and exposing yourself
and me for this way?”
“Oh, say no more, say no more; every word you say
kills me,” cried my lady; and she ran on like one, as Mrs.
Jane says, raving, “ Oh, Sir Condy, Sir Condy! I that had
hoped to find in you——”
“Why now, faith, this is a little too much; do, Bella, try
to recollect yourself, my dear; am not I your husband, and
of your own choosing, and is not that enough?”
“Oh, too much! too much!” cried my lady, wringing her’
hands.
“Why, my dear, come to your right. senses, for the love
of Heaven. See, is not the whisky-punch, jug and bowl and
all, gone out of the room long ago? What is it, in the wide
world, you have to complain of? ”
But still my lady sobbed and sobbed, and called herself
the most wretched of women; and among other out-of-the-
way, provoking things, asked my master was he fit com-
pany for her, and he drinking all night? This nettling
him, which it was hard to do, he replied that, as to drinking
all night, he was then as sober as she was herself, and that
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1023
it was no matter how much a man drank, provided it did
no ways affect or stagger him; that as to being fit company
for her, he thought himself of a family to be fit company
for any lord or lady in the land; but that he never pre-
vented her from seeing and keeping what company she
pleased, and that he had done his best to make Castle Rack-
rent pleasing to her since her marriage, having always had
the house full of visitors, and if her own relations were not
amongst them, he said that was their own fault, and their
pride’s fault, of which he was sorry to find her ladyship had
so unbecoming a share.
So concluding, he took his candle and walked off to his
room, and my lady was in her tantrums for three days
after, and would have been so much longer, no doubt, but
some of her friends, young ladies and cousins and second
cousins, came to Castle Rackrent, by poor master’s express
invitation, to see her, and she was in a hurry to get up, as
Mrs. Jane called it, a play for them, and so got well, and
was as finely dressed and as happy to look at as ever; and
all the young ladies, who used to be in her room dressing
of her, said in Mrs. Jane’s hearing that my lady was the
, happiest bride ever they had seen, and that, to be sure, a
love-match was the only thing for happiness where the
parties could any way afford it.
As to affording it, God knows it was little they knew of
the matter : my lady’s few thousands could not last forever,
especially the way she went on with them, and letters from
tradesfolk came every post thick and threefold, with bills
as long as my arm, of years’ and years’ standing. My son
Jason had ’em all handed over to him, and the pressing
letters were all unread by Sir Condy, who hated trouble,
and could never be brought to hear talk of business, but
still put it off and put it off, saying, “Settle it anyhow,”
or “ Bid ’em call again to-morrow,” or “ Speak to me about
it some other time.” Now it was hard to find the right
time to speak, for in the mornings he was a-bed, and in the
evenings over his bottle, where no gentleman chooses to be
disturbed. Things in a twelve-month or so came to such a
pass there was no making a shift to go on any longer,
though we were all of us well enough used to live from
hand to mouth at Castle Rackrent. One day, I remember.
when there was a power of company, all sitting after din-
1024 IRISH LITERATURE.
ner in the dusk, not to say dark, in the drawing-room, my
lady having rung five times for candles and none to go up,
the housekeeper sent up the footman, who went to my mis-
tress and whispered behind her chair how it was.
“ My lady,” says he, “ there are no candles in the house.”
“ Bless me,” says she; “ then take a horse and gallop off
as fast as you can to Carrick O’Fungus, and get some.”
“ And in the meantime tell them to step into the play-
house, and try if there are not some bits left,” added Sir
Condy, who happened to be within hearing. The man was
sent up again to my lady to let her know there was no horse
to go but one that wanted a shoe.
“Go to Sir Condy, then; I know nothing at all about the
horses,” said my lady; “ why do you plague me with these
things?” How it was settled I really forget, but to the
best of my remembrance the boy was sent down to my son
Jason’s to borrow candles for the night. Another time, in
the winter, and on a desperate cold day, there was no turf
in for the parlor and above stairs, and scarce enough for
the cook in the kitchen. The little gossoon was sent off to
the neighbors to see and beg or borrow some, but none
could he bring back with him for love or money, so, as
needs must, we were forced to trouble Sir Condy—“ Well,
and if there’s no turf to be had in the town or country,
why, what signifies talking any more about it; can’t ye go
and cut down a tree?”
“Which tree, please your honor?” I made bold to say.
w Any tree at all that’s good to burn,” said Sir Condy;
“send off smart and get one down and the fires lighted
before my lady gets up to breakfast, or the house will be
too hot to hold us.” .
He was always very considerate in all things about my
lady, and she wanted for nothing whilst he had it to give.
Well, when things were tight with them about this time,
my son Jason put in a word again about the Lodge, and
made a genteel offer to lay down the purchase-money, to
relieve Sir Condy’s distresses. Now Sir Condy had it from
the best authority that there were two writs come down to
the sheriff against his person, and the sheriff, as ill-luck
would have it, was no friend of his, and talked how he must
do his duty, and how he would do it, if it was against the
first man in the country, or even his own brother, let alone
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1025
one who had voted against him at the last election, as Sir
Condy had done. So Sir Condy was fain to take the pur-
chase-money of the Lodge from my son Jason to settle mat-
ters; and sure enough it was a good bargain for both par-
ties, for my son bought the fee-simple of a good house for
him and his heirs forever, for little or nothing, and by
selling of it for that same my master saved himself from a
jail. Every way it turned out fortunate for Sir Condy, for
before the money was all gone there came a general elec-
tion, and he being so well beloved in the county, and one of
the oldest families, no one had a better right to stand candi-
date for the vacancy; and he was called upon by all his
friends, and the whole county, I may say, to declare him-
self against the old member, who had little thought of a
contest. My master did not relish the thoughts of a
troublesome canvass and all the ill-will he might bring
upon himself by disturbing the peace of the county, be-
sides the expense, which was no trifle; but all his friends
called upon one another to subscribe, and they formed
themselves into a committee, and wrote all his circular-let-
ters for him, and engaged all his agents, and did all the
business unknown to him; and he was well pleased that it
should be go at last, and my lady herself was very sanguine
about the election; and there was open house kept night
and day at Castle Rackrent, and I thought I never saw my
lady look so well in her life as she did at that time. There
were grand dinners, and all the gentlemen drinking success
to Sir Condy till they were carried off; and then dances
and balls, and the ladies all finishing with a raking pot of
tea in the morning. ‘Indeed, it was well the company made
it their choice to sit up all nights, for there were not half
beds enough for the sights of people that were in it, though
there were shake-downs in the drawing-room always made
up before sunrise for those that liked it.
For my part, when I saw the doings that were going on,
and the loads of claret that went down the throats of them
that had no right to be asking for it, and the sights of meat
that went up to table and never came down, besides what
was carried off to one or t’ other below stair, I couldn’t but
pity my poor master, who was to pay for all; but I said
nothing, for fear of gaining myself ill-will. The day of
election will come some time or other, says I to myself, and
65
1026 IRISH LITERATURE.
all will be over; and so it did, and a glorious day it was as
any I ever had the happiness to see.
“ Huzza!huzza! Sir Condy Rackrent forever!” was the
first thing I hears in the morning, and the same and noth-
ing else all day, and not a soul sober only just when poll-
ing, enough to give their votes as became ’em, and to stand
the browbeating of the lawyers, who came tight enough
upon us; and many of our freeholders were knocked off,
having never a freehold that they could safely swear to,
and Sir Condy was not willing to have any man perjure
himself for his sake, as was done on the other side, God
knows; but no matter for that. Some of our friends were
dumbfounded by the lawyers asking them: “ Had they
ever been upon the ground where their freeholds lay?”
Now, Sir Condy, being tender of the consciences of them
that had not been on the ground, and so could not swear
to a freehold when cross-examined by them lawyers, sent
out for a couple of cleavefuls‘ of the sods of his farm of
Gulteeshinnagh; and as soon as the sods came into town,
he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after, you
know, they could fairly swear they had been upon the
ground. We gained the day by this piece of honesty. I
thought I should have died in the streets for joy when I
seed my poor master chaired, and he bareheaded, and it
raining as hard as it could pour; but all the crowds follow-
ing him up and down, and he bowing and shaking hands
with the whole town.
“Ts that Sir Condy Rackrent in the chair?” says a
stranger man in the crowd.
. “ The same,” says I. “ Who else could it be? God bless
im!”
“ And I take it, then, you belong to him?” says he.
“Not at all,” says I; “but I live under him, and have
done so these two hundred years and upwards, me and
mine.”
“Tt’s lucky for you, then,” rejoins he, “ that he is where
he is; for was he anywhere else but in the chair, this
minute he’d be in a worse place; for I was sent down on
purpose to put him up, and here’s my order for so doing
in my pocket.”
It was a writ that villain the wine merchant had marked
1 Cleave, a large basket.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1027
against my poor master for some hundreds of an old debt,
which it was a shame to be talking of at such a time as this.
“ Put it in your pocket again, and think no more of it
anyways for seven years to come, my honest friend,” says
1; “he ’s a member of Parliament now, praised be God, and
such as you can’t touch him; and if you’ll take a fool’s
advice, I'd have you keep out of the way this day, or you "Il
run a good chance of getting your deserts amongst my
master’s friends, unless you choose to drink his health like
everybody else.”
“T’ve no objection to that in life,” said he. So we went
into one of the public-houses kept open for my master; and
we had a great deal of talk about this thing and that.
“ And how is it,” says he, “ your master keeps on so well
upon his legs? I heard say he was off Holantide twelve-
month past.”
“ Never was better or heartier in his life,” said I.
“Tt’s not that I’m after speaking of,’ said he; “but
there was a great report of his being ruined.”
“No matter,” says I; “the sheriffs two years running
were his particular friends, and the sub-sheriffs were both
of them gentlemen, and were properly spoken to; and so
the writs lay snug with them, and they, as I understand
by my son Jason the custom in them cases is, returned the
writs as they came to them to those that sent ’em—much
good may it do them !—with a word in Latin, that no such
person as Sir Condy Rackrent, Bart., was to be found in
those parts.”
“Oh, I understand all those ways better—no offense—
than you,” says he, laughing, and at the same time filling
his glass to my master’s good health, which convinced me
he was a warm friend in his heart after all, though appear-
ances were a little suspicious or so at first. “To be sure,”
says he, still cutting his joke, “when a man’s over head
and shoulders in debt, he may live the faster for it, and the
better if he goes the right way about it, or else how is it
go many live on so well, as we see every day after they are
ruined?”
“How is it,” says I, being a little merry at the time;
“how is it but just as you see the ducks in the chicken-
yard, just after their heads are cut off by the cook, running
round and round faster than when alive?”
1028 IRISH LITERATURE.
At which conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he
had never had the happiness yet to see the chicken-yard at
Castle Rackrent.
“It won't, be long so, I hope,” says I; “ you ’ll be kindly
welcome there, as everybody is made by my master; there
is not a freer-spoken gentleman or a better beloved, high
or low, in all Ireland.”
And of what passed after this I’m not sensible, for we
drank Sir Condy’s good health and the downfall of his
enemies till we could stand no longer ourselves. And little
did I think at the time, or till long after, how I was har-
boring my poor master’s greatest of enemies myself. This
fellow had the impudence, after coming to see the chicken-
yard, to get me to introduce him to my son Jason; little
more than the man that never was born did I guess at his
meaning by this visit: he gets him a correct list fairly
drawn out from my son Jason of all my master’s debts,
and goes straight round to the creditors and buys them all
up, which he did easy enough, seeing the half of them never
expected to see their money out of Sir Condy’s hands.
Then, when this base-minded limb of the law, as I after-
wards detected him in being, grew to be sole creditor over
all, he takes him out a custodiam on all the denominations
and sub-denominations, and even carton and half-carton
upon the estate; and not content with that, must have an
execution against the master’s goods and down to the fur-
niture, though little worth, of Castle Rackrent itself. But
this is a part of my story I’m not come to yet, and it’s
bad to be forestalling: ill news flies fast enough all the
world over.
To go back to the day of the election, which I never think
of but with pleasure and tears of gratitude for those good
times, after the election was quite and clean over, there
comes shoals of people from all parts, claiming to have
obliged my master with their votes, and putting him in
mind of promises which he could never remember himself
to have made: one was to have a freehold for each of his
four sons; another was to have a renewal of a lease; an-
other an abatement; one came to be paid ten guineas for a
pair of silver buckles sold my master on the hustings,
which turned out to be no better than copper gilt; another
had a long bill for oats, the half of which never went into
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1029
the granary to my certain knowledge, and the other half
was not fit for the cattle to touch; but the bargain was
made the week before the election, and the coach and
saddle-horses were got into order for the day,’ besides a
vote fairly got by them oats; so no more reasoning on that
head. But then there was no end to them that were telling
Sir Condy he had engaged to make their sons excisemen, or
high constables, or the like; and as for them that had bills
to give in for liquor, and beds, and straw, and ribands, and
horses, and post-chaises for the gentlemen freeholders that
came from all parts and other counties to vote for my
master, and were not, to be sure, to be at any charges, there
was no standing against all these; and, worse than all, the
gentlemen of my master’s committee, who managed all for
him, and talked how they ’d bring him in without costing
him a penny, and subscribed by hundreds very genteelly,
forgot to pay their subscriptions, and had laid out in
agents’ and lawyers’ fees and secret-service money to the
Lord knows how much; and my master could never ask
one of them for their subscription you are sensible, nor for
the price of a fine horse he had sold one of them; so it all
was left at his door.
He could never, God bless him again! I say, bring himself
to ask a gentleman for money, despising such sort of con-
versation himself; but others, who were not gentlemen
born, behaved very uncivil in pressing him at this very
time, and all he could do to content ’em all was to take
himself out of the way as fast as possible to Dublin, where
my lady had taken a house fitting for him as a member of
Parliament, to attend his duty in there all the winter. I
was very lonely when the whole family was gone, and all
the things they had ordered to go, and forgot, sent after
them by the car. There was then a great silence in Castle
Rackrent, and I went moping from room to room, hearing
the doors clap for want of right locks, and the wind
through the broken windows, that the glazier never would
come to mend, and the rain coming through the roof and
best ceilings all over the house for want of the slater, whose
bill was not paid, besides our having no slates or shingles
for that part of the old building which was shingled and
burnt when the chimney took fire, and had been open to the
weather ever since.
1030 IRISH LITERATURE.
I took myself to the servants’ hall in the evening to
smoke my pipe as usual, but missed the bit of talk we used
to have there sadly, and ever after was content to stay in
the kitchen and boil my little potatoes and put up my bed
there, and every post-day I looked in the newspaper, but
no news of my master in the House; he never spoke good
or bad, but, as the butler wrote down word to my son
Jason, was very ill-used by the Government about a place
that was promised him and never given, after his support-
ing them against his conscience very honorably, and being
greatly abused for it, which hurt him greatly, he having
the name of a great patriot in the country before. The
house and living in Dublin, too, were not to be had for
nothing, and my son Jason said: “Sir Condy must soon
be looking out for a new agent, for I’ve done my part and
can do no more. If my lady had the Bank of Ireland to
spend, it would go all in one winter, and Sir Condy would
never gainsay her, though he does not care the rind of a
lemon for her all the while.”
Now I could not bear to hear Jason giving out after this
manner against the family, and twenty people standing by
in the street. Ever since he had lived at the Lodge of his
own, he looked down, howsomever, upon poor old Thady,
and was grown quite a great gentleman, and had none of
his relations near him; no.wonder he was no kinder to poor
Sir Condy than to his own kith or kin. In the spring it
was the villain that got the list of the debts from him
brought down the custodiam, Sir Condy still attending his
duty in Parliament; and I could scarcely believe my own
old eyes, or the spectacles with which I read it, when I was
shown my son Jason’s name joined in the custodiam, but he
told me it was only for form’s sake, and to make things
easier than if all the land was under the power of a total
stranger. Well, I did not know what to think; it was hard
to be talking ill of my own, and I could not but grieve for
my poor master’s fine estate, all torn by these vultures of
the law; so I said nothing, but just looked on to see how it
would all end.
It was not till the month of June that he and my lady
came down to the country. My master was pleased to take
me aside with him to the brewhouse that same evening, to
complain to me of my son and other matters, in which he
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1081
said he was confident I had neither art nor part; he said a
great deal more to me, to whom he had been fond to talk
ever since he was my white-headed boy before he came to
the estate; and all that he said about poor Judy I can never
forget, but scorn to repeat. He did not say an unkind
word of my lady, but wondered, as well he might, her re-
lations would do nothing for him or her, and they in all
this great distress. He did not take anything long to heart,
let it be as it would, and had no more malice or thought
of the like in him than a child that can’t speak; this night
it was all out of his head before he went to his bed.
He took his jug of whisky-punch—my lady was grown
quite easy about the whisky-punch by this time, and so I
did suppose all was going on right betwixt them, till I
learnt the truth through Mrs. Jane, who talked over the
affairs to the housekeeper, and I within hearing. The
night my master came home, thinking of nothing at all but
just making merry, he drank his bumper toast “ to the de-
serts of that old curmudgeon my father-in-law, and all ene-
mies at Mount Juliet’s Town.” Now my lady was no
longer in the mind she formerly was, and did noways relish
hearing her own friends abused in her presence, she said.
“Then why don’t they show themselves your friends,”
said my master, “ and oblige me with the loan of the money
I condescended by your advice, my dear, to ask? It’s now
three posts since I sent off my letter, desiring in the post-
script a speedy answer by the return of the post, and no
account at all from them yet.”
“I expect they ’ll write to me next post,” says my lady,
and that was all that passed then; but it was easy from
this to guess there was a coolness betwixt them, and with
good cause.
The next morning, being post-day, I sent off the gossoon
early to the post-office, to see was there any letter likely to
set matters to rights, and he brought back one with the
proper postmark upon it, sure enough, and I had no time
to examine or make any conjecture more about it, for into
the servants’ hall pops Mrs. Jane with a blue bandbox
in her hand, quite entirely mad.
“Dear ma’am, and what’s the matter?” says I.
“ Matter enough,” says she; “don’t you see my bandbox
is wet through, and my best bonnet here spoiled, besides
1032 IRISH LITERATURE.
my lady’s, and all by the rain coming in through that gal-
lery window that you might have got mended if you ’d had
any sense, Thady, all the time we were in town in the
winter?”
“Sure, I could not get the glazier, ma’am,” says I.
“You might have stopped it up anyhow,” says she.
“So I did, ma’am, to the best of my ability; one of the
panes with the old pillow-case, and the other with a piece
of the old stage green curtain. Sure I was as careful as
possible all the time you were away, and not a drop of rain
came in at that window of all the windows in the house, all
winter, ma’am, when under my care; and now the family ’s
come home, and it ’s summer-time, I never thought no more
about it, to be sure; but dear, it’s a pity to think of your
bonnet, ma’am. But here’s what will please you, ma’am—
a letter from Mount Juliet’s Town for my lady.”
With that she snatches it from me without a word more,
and runs up the back stairs to my mistress; I follows with
a slate to make up the window. This window was in the
long passage, or gallery, as my lady gave out orders to
have it called, in the gallery leading to my master’s bed-
chamber and hers. And when I went up with the slate, the
door having no lock, and the bolt spoilt, was ajar after
Mrs. Jane, and, as I was busy with the window, I heard all
that was saying within.
“Well, what ’s in your letter, Bella, my dear? ” says he:
“you ’re a long time spelling it over.”
“Won't you shave this morning, Sir Condy?” says she,
and put the letter into her pocket.
“I shaved the day before yesterday,” said he, “my dear,
and that’s not what I’m thinking of now; but anything to
oblige you, and to have peace and quietness, my dear ”—
and presently I had a glimpse of him at the cracked glass
over the chimney-piece, standing up shaving himself to
please my lady. But she took no notice, but went on read-
ing her book, and Mrs. Jane doing her hair behind.
“ What is it you ’re reading there, my dear?—phoo, I ’ve
cut myself with this razor; the man’s a cheat that sold it
me, but I have not paid him for it yet. What is it you 're
reading there? Did you hear me asking you, my dear?”
é “The Sorrows of Werter,’” replies my lady, as well as
I could hear,
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1033
“I think more of the sorrows of Sir Condy,” says my
master, joking like. “What news from Mount Juliet’s
Town.”
“No news,” says she, “ but the old story over again; my
friends all reproaching me still for what I can’t help now.”
“Is it for marrying me?” said my master, still shaving.
“ What signifies, as you say, talking of that, when it can’t
be helped now? ”
With that she heaved a great sigh that I heard plain
enough in the passage.
“And did not you use me basely, Sir Condy,” says she,
“not to tell me you were ruined before I married you?”
“Tell you, my dear!” said he. “Did you ever ask me
one word about it? And had not you friends enough of
your own, that were telling you nothing else from morning
to night, if you’d have listened to them slanders? ”
“No slanders, nor are my friends slanderers; and I can’t
bear to hear them treated with disrespect as I do,” says my
lady, and took out her pocket-handkerchief; “ they are the
best of friends, and if I had taken their advice—But my
father was wrong to lock me up, own. That was the only
unkind thing I can charge him with; for if he had not
locked me up, I should never have had a serious thought of
running away as I did.”
“Well, my dear,” said my master, “don’t cry and make
yourself uneasy about it now, when it’s all over, and you
have the man of your own choice, in spite of ’em all.”
“T was too young, I know, to make a choice at the time
you ran away with me, I’m sure,” says my lady, and an-
other sigh, which made my master, half-shaved as he was,
turn round upon her in surprise.
“Why, Bell,” says he, “ you can’t deny what you know
as well as I do, that it was at your own particular desire,
and that twice under your own hand and seal expressed,
that I should carry you off as I did to Scotland, and marry
you there.”
“Well, say no more about it, Sir Condy,” said my lady,
pettish-like; “I was a child then, you know.”
“ And as far as I know, you ’re little better now, my dear
Bella, to be talking in this manner to your husband’s face;
but I won't take it ill of you, for I know it’s something in
that letter you put into your pocket just now that has set
1034 IRISH LITERATURE.
you against me all on a sudden, and imposed upon your
understanding.”
“It’s not so very easy as you think it, Sir Condy, to im-
pose upon my understanding,” said my lady.
“ My dear,” says he, “I have, and with reason the best
opinion of your understanding of any man now breathing ;
and you know I have never set my own in competition with
it till now, my dear Bella,” says he, taking her hand from
her book as kind as could be—* till now, when I have the
great advantage of being quite cool, and you not; so don’t
believe one word your friends say against your own Sir
Condy, and lend me the letter out of your pocket, till I see
what it is they can have to say.”
“Take it then,” says she; “and as you are quite cool,
I hope it is a proper time to request you’ll allow me to
comply with the wishes of all my own friends, and return
to live with my father and family, during the remainder of
my wretched existence, at Mount Juliet’s Town.”
At this my poor master fell back a few paces, like one
that had been shot.
“You ’re not serious, Bella,” says he; “and could you
find it in your heart to leave me this way in the very middle
of my distresses, all alone?” But recollecting himself
after his first surprise, and a moment’s time for reflection,
he said, with a great deal of consideration for my lady:
“Well, Bells, my dear, I believe you are right; for what
could you do at Castle Rackrent, and an execution against
the goods coming down, and the furniture to be canted, and
an auction in the house all next week? So you have my
full consent to go, since that is your desire; only you must
not think of my accompanying you, which I could not in
honor do upon the terms I always have been, since our
marriage, with your friends. Besides, I have business to
transact at home; so in the meantime, if we are to have any
breakfast this morning, let us go down and have it for the
last time in peace and comfort, Bella.”
Then as I heard my master coming to the passage door,
I finished fastening up my slate against the broken pane;
and when he came out I wiped down the window-seat with
my wig, and bade him a “good morrow” as kindly as I
could, seeing he was in trouble, though he strove and
thought to hide it from me.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1035
“This window is all racked and tattered,” says I, “and
it’s what I ’m striving to mend.”
“Tt ig all racked and tattered, plain enough,” says he,
“and never mind mending it, honest old Thady,” says he;
“it will do well enough for you and I, and that’s all the
company we shall have left in the house by-and-by.”
“ I'm sorry to see your honor so low this morning,” says
I; “but you ’Il be better after taking your breakfast.”
“Step down to the servants’ hall,” said he, “and bring
me up the pen and ink into the parlor, and get a sheet of
paper from Mrs. Jane, for I have business that can’t brook
to be delayed; and come into the parlor with the pen and
ink yourself, Thady, for I must have you to witness my
signing a paper I have to execute in a hurry.”
Well, while I was getting of the pen and ink-horn, and
the sheet of paper, I ransacked my brains to think what
could be the papers my poor master could have to execute
in such a hurry, he that never thought of such a thing as
doing business afore breakfast in the whole course of his
life, for any man living; but this was for my lady, as I
afterwards found, and the more genteel of him after all her
treatment.
I was just witnessing the paper that he had scrawled
over, and was shaking the ink out of my pen upon the car-
pet, when my lady came in to breakfast, and she started as
if it had been a ghost; as well she might, when she saw Sir
Condy writing at this unseasonable hour.
“That will do very well, Thady,” says he to me, and took
the paper I had signed to, without knowing what upon the
earth it might be, out of my hands, and walked, folding it
up, to my lady.
“ You are concerned in this, my Lady Rackrent,” said he,
putting it into her hands; “and I beg you’ll keep this
memorandum safe, and show it to your friends the first
thing you do when you get home; but put it in your pocket
now, my dear, and let us eat our breakfast, in God’s name.”
“ What is all this?” said my lady, opening the paper in
great curiosity.
“It’s only a bit of a memorandum of what I think be-
comes me to do whenever I am able,” says my master; “ you
know my situation, tied hand and foot at the present time
being, but that can’t last always, and when I’m dead and
1036 IRISH LITERATURE.
gone the land will be to the good, Thady, you know; and
take notice it ’s my intention your lady should have a clear
five hundred a year jointure off the estate afore any of my
debts are paid.”
“Oh, please your honor,” says I, “I can’t expect to live
to see that time, being now upwards of fourscore years of
age, and you a young man, and likely to continue so by the
help of God.”
I was vexed to see my lady so insensible, too, for all she
said was: “This is very genteel of you, Sir Condy. You
need not wait any longer, Thady.” So I just picked up the
pen and ink that had tumbled on the floor, and heard my
master finish with saying: “ You behaved very genteel to
me, my dear, when you threw all the little you had in your
power along with yourself into my hands; and as I don’t
deny but what you may have had some things to complain
of ”—to be sure he was thinking then of Judy or of the
whisky-punch, one or t’ other, or both,—“ and as I don’t
deny but you may have had something to complain of, my
dear, it is but fair you should have something in the form
of compensation to look forward to agreeably in the future;
besides, it’s an act of justice to myself, that none of your
friends, my dear, may ever have it to say against me; I
married for money, and not for love.”
“That is the last thing I should ever have thought of
saying of you, Sir Condy,” said my lady, looking very
gracious.
“Then, my dear,” said Sir Condy, “we shall part as
good friends as we met; so all’s right.”
I was greatly rejoiced to hear this, and went out of the
parlor to report it all to the kitchen. The next morning
my lady and Mrs. Jane set out for Mount Juliet’s Town in
the jaunting-car. Many wondered at my lady’s choosing
to go away, considering all things, upon the jaunting-car,
as if it was only a party of pleasure; but they did not know
till I told them that the coach was all broke in the journey
down, and no other vehicle but the car to be had. Besides.
my lady’s friends were to send their coach to meet her at
the cross-roads; so it was all done very proper.
My poor master was in great trouble after my lady left
us. The execution came down, and everything at Castle
Rackrent was seized by the gripers, and my son Jason, te
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1037
his shame be it spoken, amongst them. I wondered, for
the life of me, how he could harden himself to do it; but
then he had been studying the law, and had made himself
Attorney Quirk; so he brought down at once a heap of ac-
counts upon my master’s head. To cash lent, and to ditto,
and to ditto, and to ditto, and oats, and bills paid at mil-
liner’s and linen-draper’s, and many dresses for the
fancy balls in Dublin for my lady, and all the bills to the
workmen and tradesmen for the scenery of the theater,
and the chandler’s and grocer’s bills, and tailor’s, besides
butcher’s and baker’s and, worse than all, the old one of
that base wine merchant’s who wanted to arrest my poor
master for the amount on the election day, for which
amount Sir Condy afterwards passed his note of hand,
bearing lawful interest from the date thereof; and the
interest and compound interest was now mounted to a
terrible deal on many other notes and bonds for money
borrowed, and there was, besides, hush-money to the sub-
sheriffs, and sheets upon sheets of old and new attorneys’
bills, with heavy balances, “as per former account fur-
nished,” brought forward with interest thereon; then there
was a powerful deal due to the Crown for sixteen years’
arrear of quit-rent of the townlands of Carrickshaughlin,
with driver’s fees, and a compliment to the receiver every
year for letting the quit-rent run on to oblige Sir Condy,
and Sir Kit afore him.
Then there were bills for spirits and ribbons at the elec-
tion time, and the gentlemen of the committee’s accounts
unsettled, and their subscription never gathered ; and there
were cows to be paid for, with the smith and farrier’s bills
to be set against the rent of the demesne, with calf and hay
money; then there was all the servants’ wages, since I don’t
know when, coming due to them, and sums advanced for
them by my son Jason for clothes, and boots, and whips,
and odd moneys for sundries expended by them in journeys
to town and elsewhere, and pocket-money for the master
continually, and messengers and postage before his being
a Parliament man. I can’t myself tell you what besides;
but this I know, that when the evening came on the which
Sir Condy had appointed to settle all with my son Jason,
and when he comes into the parlor, and sees the sight of
bills and load of papers all gathered on the great dining-
1038 IRISH LITERATURE.
table for him, he puts his hands before both his eys, and
cried out, “ Merciful Jasus! what is it I see before me? ”
Then I sets an arm-chair at the table for him, and with a
deal of difficulty he sits him down, and my son Jason hands
him over the pen and ink to sign to this man’s bill and
tv’ other man’s bill, all of which he did without making the
least objections. Indeed, to give him his due, I never seen
a man more fair and honest, and easy in all his dealings,
from first to last, as Sir Condy, or more willing to pay every
man his own as far as he was able, which is as much as any
one can do.
“Well,” says he, joking-like with Jason, “I wish we
could settle it all with a stroke of my gray goose-quill.
What signifies making me wade through all this ocean of
papers here; can’t you now, who understand drawing out
an account, debtor and creditor, just sit down here at the
corner of the table and get it done out for me, that I may
have a clear view of the balance, which is all I need be
talking about, you know?”
“Very true, Sir Condy; nobody understands business
better than yourself,” says Jason.
“ Bo I’ve a right to do, being born and bred to the bar,”
says Sir Condy. “Thady, do step out and see are they
bringing in the things for the punch, for we’ve just done
all we have to do for this evening.”
I goes out accordingly, and when I came back Jason was
pointing to the balance, which was a terrible sight to my
poor master.
“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” says he. “Here’s so many
noughts they dazzle my eyes, so they do, and put me in mind
of all I suffered larning of my numeration table when I
was a boy at the day school along with you, Jason—units,
tens, hundreds, tens of hundreds. Is the punch ready,
Thady?” says he, seeing me.
“Immediately; the boy has the jug in his hand; it’s
coming upstairs, please your honor, as fast as possible,”
says I, for I saw his honor was tired out of his life; but
Jason, very short and cruel, cuts me off with—“ Don’t be
talking of punch yet awhile; it’s no time for punch yet a
bit—units, tens, hundreds,” goes he on, counting over the
master’s shoulder, “ units, tens, hundreds, thousands.”
“ A-a-ah! hold your hand,” cries my master. “ Where
MARIA EDGHWORTH. 1039
in this wide world am I to find hundreds, or units itself, let
alone thousands?”
“ The balance has been running on too long,” says Jason,
sticking to him as I could not have done at the time if you ’d
have given both the Indies and Cork to boot; “ the balance
has been running on too. long, and I’m distressed myself
on your account, Sir Condy, for money, and the thing must
be settled now on the spot, and the balance cleared off,”
says Jason.
“II thank you if you ’ll only show me how,” says Sir
Condy.
“There ’s but one way,” says Jason, “and that’s ready
enough. When there’s no cash, what can a gentleman do
but go to the land?”
“ How can you go to the land, and it under custodiam
to yourself already?” says Sir Condy; “and another cus-
todiam hanging over it? And no one at all can touch it,
you know, but the custodees.”
“Sure, can’t you sell, though at a loss? Sure you can -
sell, and I ’ve a purchaser ready for you,” says Jason.
“Have you so?” says Sir Condy. “ That’s a great point
gained. But there’s a thing now beyond all, that perhaps
you don’t know yet, barring Thady has let you into the
secret.”
“Sarrah bit of a secret, or anything at all of the kind,
has he learned from me these fifteen weeks come St. John’s
Eve,” says I, “ for we have scarce been upon speaking terms
of late. But what is it your honor means of a secret?”
__ “Why, the secret of the little keepsake I gave my Lady
Rackrent the morning she left us, that she might not go
back empty-handed to her friends.”
“My Lady Rackrent, I’m sure, has baubles and keep-
sakes enough, as those bills on the table will show,” says
Jason; “but whatever it is,” says he, taking up his pen,
“we must add it to the balance, for to be sure it can’t be
paid for.”
“No, nor can’t till after my decease,” says Sir Condy;
“that’s one good thing.” Then coloring up a good deal,
he tells Jason of the memorandum of the five-hundred-a-
year jointure he had settled upon my lady; at which Jason
was indeed mad, and said a great deal in very high words,
that it was using a gentleman who had the management of
1040 IRISH LITERATURE.
his affairs, and was, moreover, his principal creditor, ex-
tremely ill to do such a thing without consulting him, and
against his knowledge and consent. To all which Sir
Condy had nothing to reply, but that, upon his conscience,
it was in a hurry and without a moment’s thought on his
part, and he was very sorry for it, but if it was to do
over again he would do the same; and he appealed to me,
and I was ready to give my evidence, if that would do, to
the truth of all he said.
So Jason, with much ado, was brought to agree to a com-
promise.
“The purchaser that I have ready,” says he, “will be
much displeased, to be sure, at the incumbrance on the
land, but I must see and manage him. Here 'a a deed ready
drawn up; we have nothing to do but to put in the con-
sideration money and our names to it.”
“And how much am I going to sell?—the lands of
O’Shaughlin’s Town, and the lands of Gruneaghoolaghan,
and the lands of Crookagnawaturgh,” says he, just reading
to himself. “ And—oh, murder, Jason! sure you won't
put this in—the castle, stable, and appurtenances of Castle
Rackrent? ”
“ Oh, murder!” says I, clapping my hands; “ this is too
bad, Jason.”
“Why so?” said Jason. “ When it’s all, and a good
deal more to the back of it, lawfully mine, was I to push for
it?”
“Look at him,” says I, pointing to Sir Condy, who was
just leaning back in his arm-chair, with his arms falling
beside him like one stupefied; “is it you, Jason, that can
stand in his presence, and recollect all he has been to us,
and all that we have been to him, and yet use him so at the
last?”
“Who will you find to use him better, I ask you? ” said
Jason; “if he can get a better purchaser, I’m content;
I only offer to purchase, to make things easy, and oblige
him; though I don’t see what compliment I am under, if
you come to that. I have never had, asked, or charged
more than sixpence in the pound, receiver’s fees, and where
would he have got an agent for a penny less?”
“Oh, Jason! Jason! how will you stand to this in the
face of the county, and all who know you?” says I; “and
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1041
what will people think and say when they see you living
here in Castle Rackrent, and the lawful owner turned out
of the seat of his ancestors, without a cabin to put his head
into, or 80 much as a potato to eat?”
Jason, whilst I was saying this and a great deal more,
made me signs, and winks, and frowns; but I took no heed,
for I was grieved and sick at heart for my poor master, and
couldn’t but speak.
“Here sg the punch,” says Jason, for the door opened;
“here ’s the punch!”
Hearing that, my master starts up in his chair, and
recollects himself, and Jason uncorks the whisky.
“Set down the jug here,” says he, making room for it
beside the papers opposite to Sir Condy, but still not stir-
ring the deed that was to make over all.
Well, I was in great hopes he had some touch of mercy
about him when I saw him making the punch, and my
master took a glass; but Jason put it back as he was going
to fill again, saying: “No, Sir Condy, it sha’n’t be said
of me I got your signature to this deed when you were
half seas over; you know your name and handwriting in
that condition would not, if brought before the courts,
benefit me a straw; wherefore, let us settle all before we go
deeper into the punch-bowl.”
“Settle all as you will,” said Sir Condy, clapping his
hands to his ears; “ but let me hear no more. I’m bothered
to death this night.”
“You ’ve only to sign,” said Jason, putting the pen to
him.
“Take all, and be content,” said my master. So he
signed; and the man who brought in the punch witnessed
it, for I was not able, but crying like a child; and besides,
Jason said, which I was glad of, that I was no fit witness,
being so old and doting. It was so bad with me, I could
not taste a drop of the punch itself, though my master
himself, God bless him! in the midst of his trouble, poured
out a glass for me, and brought it up to my lips.
“Not a drop; I thank your honor’s honor as much as if
I took it, though.” And I just set down the glass as it was,
and went out, and when I got to the street door the neigh-
bor’s childer, who were playing at marbles there, seeing me
in great trouble, left their play, and gathered about me to
66
1042 IRISH LITERATURE.
know what ailed me; and I told them all, for it was a great
relief to me to speak to these poor childer, that seemed to
have some natural feeling left in them; and when they
were made sensible that Sir Condy was going to leave
Castle Rackrent for good and all, they set up a whillalu
that could be heard to the farthest end of the street; and
one—fine boy he was—that my master had given an apple
to that morning, cried the loudest; but they all were the
same sorry, for Sir Condy was greatly beloved amongst the
-childer, for letting them go a-nutting in the demesne, with-
out saying a word to them, though my lady objected to
them. The people in the town, who were the most of them
standing at their doors, hearing the childer cry, would
know the reason of it; and when the report was made
known, the people one and all gathered in great anger
against my son Jason, and terror at the notion of his com-
ing to be landlord over them, and they cried: “ No Jason!
no Jason! Sir Condy! Sir Condy! Sir Condy Rackrent for-
ever!”
And the mob grew so great and so loud, I was frightened,
and made my way back to the house to warn my son to
make his escape or hide himself for fear of the conse-
quences. Jason would not believe me till they came all
round the house, and to the windows, with great shouts.
Then he grew quite pale, and asked Sir Condy what had he
best do?
“Tl tell you what you had best do,” said Sir Condy,
who was laughing to see his fright; “finish your glass
first, then let 8 go to the window and show ourselves, and
I'll tell ’em—or you shall, if you please—that I’m going
to the Lodge for change of air for my health, and by my
. own desire, for the rest of my days.”
“Do so,” said Jason, who never meant it should have
been so, but could not refuse him the Lodge at this un-
seasonable time. Accordingly, Sir Condy threw up the
sash and explained matters, and thanked all his friends,
and bid them look in at the punch-bowl, and observe that
Jason and he had been sitting over it very good friends;
so the mob was content, and he sent them out some whisky
to drink his health, and that was the last time his honor’s
health was ever drunk at Castle Rackrent.
The very next day, being too proud, as he said to me, to
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1043
stay an hour longer in a house that did not belong to him,
he sets off to the Lodge, and I along with him not many
hours after. And there was great bemoaning through all
O’Shauglin’s Town, which I stayed to witness, and gave
my poor master a full account of when I got to the Lodge.
He was very low, and in his bed when I got there, and com-
plained of a great pain about his heart; but I guessed it
was only trouble and all the business, let alone vexation,
he had gone through of late, and knowing the nature of
him from a boy, I took my pipe, and whilst smoking it by
the chimney began telling him how he was beloved and
regretted in the county, and it did him a deal of good to
hear it.
“ Your honor has a great many friends yet that you don’t
know of, rich and poor, in the county,” says I; “for as I
was coming along the road I met two gentlemen in their
own carriages, who asked after you, knowing me, and
wanted to know where you was and all about you, and
even how old I was. Think of that.”
Then he wakened out of his doze and began questioning
me who the gentlemen were. And the next morning it
came into my head to go, unknown to anybody, with my
master’s compliments, round to many of the gentlemen’s
houses where he and my lady used to visit, and people that
I knew were his great friends, and would go to Cork to
serve him any day in the year, and I made bold to try to
borrow a trifle of cash from them. They all treated me
very civil for the most part, and asked a great many ques-
tions very kind about my lady and Sir Condy and all the
family, and were greatly surprised to learn from me Castle
Rackrent was sold, and my master at the Lodge for health;
and they all pitied him greatly, and he had their good
wishes, if that would do; but money was a thing they un-
fortunately had not any of them at this time to spare.
I had my journey for my pains, and I, not used to walk-
ing, nor supple as formerly, was greatly tired, but had the
satisfaction of telling my master when I got to the Lodge
all the civil things said by high and low.
“Thady,” says he, “all you ve been telling me brings
a strange thought into my head. I’ve a notion I shall not
be long for this world anyhow, and I’ve a great fancy to
see my own funeral afore I die.” I was greatly shocked, at
1044 IRISH LITERATURE.
the first speaking, to hear him speak so light about his
funeral, and he to all appearance in good health; but recol-
lecting myself, answered :
“To be sure it would be as fine a sight as one could see,”
I dared to say, “ and one I should be proud to witness, and
I did not doubt his honor’s would be as great a funeral
as ever Sir Patrick O’Shaughlin’s was, and such a one as
that had never been known in the county afore or since.”
But I never thought he was in earnest about seeing his own
funeral himself till the next day he returns to it again.
“Thady,” says he, “as far as the wake goes, sure I
might without any great trouble have the satisfaction of
seeing a bit of my own funeral.”
“ Well, since your honor’s honor ’s so bent upon it,” says
I, not willing to cross him, and he in trouble, “ we must
see what we can do.”
So he fell into a sort of sham disorder, which was easy
done, as he kept his bed, and no one to see him; and I got
my shister, who was an old woman very handy about the
sick, and very skillful, to come up to the Lodge to nurse
him; and we gave out, she knowing no better, that he was
just at his latter end, and it answered beyond anything;
and there was a great throng of people, men, women, and
childer, and there being only two rooms at the Lodge,
except what was locked up full of Jason’s furniture and
things, the house was soon as full and fuller than it could
hold, and the heat, and smoke, and noise wonderful great;
and standing amongst them that were near the bed, but not
thinking at all of the dead, I was startled by the sound of
my master’s voice from under the greatcoats that had been
thrown all at top, and I went close up, no one noticing.
“ Thady,” says he, “I’ve had enough of this; I ’m smoth-
ering, and can’t hear a word of all they ’re saying of the
deceased.”
“God bless you, and lie still and quiet,” says I, “a bit
longer, for my shister ’s afraid of ghosts, and would die on
the spot with fright was she to see you come to life all on
a sudden this way without the least preparation.”
So he lays him still, though wellnigh stifled, and I made
all haste to tell the secret of the joke, whispering to one
and t’ other, and there was a great surprise, but not so
great as we had laid out it would. “And aren’t we to
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1045
have the pipes and tobacco, after coming so far to-night?”
said some; but they were all well enough pleased when his
honor got up to drink with them, and sent for more spirits
from a shebeenhouse, where they very civilly let him have
it upon credit. So the night passed off very merrily, but
to my mind Sir Condy was rather upon the sad order in the
midst of it all, not finding there had been such a great talk
about himself after his death as he had always expected
to hear.
The next morning, when the house was cleared of them,
and none but my shister and myself left in the kitchen with
Sir Condy, one opens the door and walks in, and who
should it be but Judy M’Quirk herself! I forgot to notice
that she had been married long since, whilst young Cap-
tain Moneygaw] lived in the Lodge, to the captain’s hunts-
man, who after a whilst listed and left her, and was killed
in the wars. Poor Judy fell off greatly in her good looks
after her being married a year or two; and being smoke-
dried in the cabin, and neglecting herself like, it was hard
for Sir Condy himself to know her again till she spoke; but
when she says, “It’s Judy M’Quirk, please your honor;
don’t you remember her?”
“Oh, Judy, is it you?” says his honor. “Yes, sure,
I remember you very well; but you’re greatly altered,
Judy.”
“Sure it’s time for me,” says she, “and I think your
honor, since I seen you last—but that’s a great while ago
—is altered too.”
“And with reason, Judy,” says Sir Condy, fetching a
sort of a sigh. “But how’s this, Judy?” he goes on. “I
take it a little amiss of you that you were not at my wake
last night.”
“ Ah, don’t be being jealous of that,” says she; “I didn’t
hear a sentence of your honor’s wake till it was all over,
or it would have gone hard with me but I would been at it,
sure; but I was forced to go ten miles up the country three
days ago to a wedding of a relation of my own’s, and didn’t
get home till after the wake was over. But,” says she, “it
won’t be so, I hope, the next time, please your honor.”
“That we shall see, Judy,” says his honor, “and maybe
sooner than you think for, for I’ve been very unwell this
1046 IRISH LITERATURE.
while past, and don’t reckon anyway I’m long for this
world.”
At this Judy takes up the corner of her apron, and puts
it first to one eye and then to t’ other, being to all appear-
ance in great trouble; and my shister put in her word, and
bid his honor have a good heart, for she was sure it was
only the gout that Sir Patrick used to have flying about
him, and he ought to drink a glass or a bottle extraordinary
to keep it out of his stomach ; and he promised to take her
advice, and sent out for more spirits immediately; and
Judy made a sign to me, and I went over to the door to
her, and she said: “ I wonder to see Sir Condy so low; has
he heard the news?”
“What news?” says I.
“Didn’t ye hear it, then?” says she; “my Lady Rack-
rent that was is kilt and lying for dead, and I don’t doubt
but it’s all over with her by this time.”
“ Mercy on us all,” says 1; “ how was it?”
“The jaunting-car it was that ran away with her,” says
Judy. “I was coming home that same time from Biddy
M’Guggin’s marriage, and a great crowd of people, too,
upon the road coming from the fair of Crookagnawaturgh,
and I sees a jaunting-car standing in the middle of the road,
and with the two wheels off and all tattered. “ What 's
this?’ says I. ‘Didn’t ye hear of it?’ says they that were
looking on; ‘it’s my Lady Rackrent’s car, that was run-
ning away from her husband, and the horse took fright at a
carrion that lay across the road, and so ran away with the
jaunting-car, and my Lady Rackrent and her maid scream-
ing, and the horse ran with them against a car that was
coming from the fair with the boy asleep on it, and the
lady’s petticoat hanging out of the jaunting-car caught,
and she was dragged I can’t tell you how far upon the road,
and it all broken up with the stones just going to be
pounded, and one of the road-makers, with his sledge-ham-
mer in his hand, stops the horse at the last, but my Lady
Rackrent was all kilt and smashed, and they lifted her into
a cabin hard by, and the maid was found after where she
had been thrown in the gripe of a ditch, her cap and
bonnet all full of bog water, and they say my lady can’t
live any way. Thady, pray now is it true what I’m
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1047
told for sartain, that Sir Condy has made over all to your
son Jason?’ ”
“All,” says I.
“ All entirely? ” says she again.
“ All entirely,” says I.
“Then,” says she, “that’s a great shame; but don’t
be telling Jason what I say.”
“ And what is it you say?” cries Sir Condy, leaning over
betwixt us, which made Judy start greatly. “I know the
time when Judy M’Quirk would never have stayed so long
talking at the door and I in the house.”
“Oh!” says Judy, “for shame, Sir Condy; times are
altered since then, and it’s my Lady Rackrent you ought
to be thinking of.”
“ And why should I be thinking of her, that ’s not think-
ing of me now? ” says Sir Condy.
“No matter for that,” says Judy, very properly; “it’s
time you should be thinking of her, if ever you mean to do
it at all, for don’t you know she’s lying for death?”
“My Lady Rackrent!” says Sir Condy, in a surprise;
“why, it’s but two days since we parted, as you very well
know, Thady, in her full health and spirits, and she, and
her maid along with her, going to Mount Juliet’s Town on
her jaunting-car.”
“She ’ll never ride no more on her jaunting-car,” said
Judy, “ for it has been the death of her sure enough.”
“ And is she dead, then?” says his honor.
“As good as dead, I hear,” says Judy; “but there’s
Thady here as just learnt the whole truth of the story as I
had it, and it’s fitter he or anybody else should be telling
it you than I, Sir Condy: I must be going home to the
childer.”
But he stops her, but rather from civility in him, as I
could see very plainly, than anything else, for Judy was,
as his honor remarked at her first coming in, greatly
changed, and little likely, as far as I could see—though she
did not seem to be clear of it herself,—little likely to be
my Lady Rackrent now, should there be a second toss-up
to be made. But I told him the whole story out of the face,
just as Judy had told it to me, and he sent off a messenger
with his compliments to Mount Juliet’s Town that even-
ing to learn the truth of the report, and Judy bid the
1048 IRISH LITERATURE.
boy that was going call in at Tim M’Enerney’s shop in
O’Shaughlin’s Town and buy her a new shawl.
“Do so,” said Sir Condy, “ and tell Tim to take no money
from you, for I must pay him for the shawl myself.” At
this my shister throws me over a look, and I says nothing,
but turned the tobacco in my mouth, whilst Judy began
making a many words about it, and saying how she could
not be beholden for shawls to any gentleman. I left her
there to consult with my shister, did she think there was
anything in it, and my shister thought I was blind to be
asking her the question, and I thought my shister must
see more into it than I did, and recollecting all past times
and everything, I changed my mind, and came over to her
way of thinking, and we settled it that Judy was very
like to be my Lady Rackrent after all, if a vacancy should
have happened.
The next day, before his honor was up, somebody comes
with a double knock at the door, and I was greatly sur-
prised to see it was my son Jason.
“Jason, is it you?” said I; “what brings you to the
Lodge?” says I. “Is it my Lady Rackrent? We know
that already since yesterday.”
“ Maybe so,” says he; “ but I must see Sir Condy about
it.”
“ You can’t see him yet,” says I; “sure he is not awake.”
“What then,” says he, “can’t he be wakened, and I
atanding at the door?”
“T’ll not be disturbing his honor for you, Jason,”
says I; “ many ’s the hour you ’ve waited in your time, and
been proud to do it, till his honor was at leisure to speak
to you. His honor,” says I, raising my voice, at which his
honor wakens of his own accord, and calls to me from the
room to know who it was I was speaking to. Jason made
no more ceremony, but follows me into the room.
“How are you, Sir Condy?” says he; “I’m happy to
see you looking so well; I came up to know how you did
to-day, and to see did you want for anything at the Lodge.”
“Nothing at all, Mr. Jason, I thank you,” says he; for
his honor had his own share of pride, and did not choose,
after all that had passed, to be beholden, I suppose, to my
son; “but pray take a chair and be seated, Mr. Jason.”
Jason sat him down upon the chest, for chair there was
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1049
none, and after he had sat there some time, and a silence on
all sides,—
“ What news is there stirring in the country, Mr. Jason
M’Quirk?” says Sir Condy, very easy, yet high like.
“None that’s news to you, Sir Condy, I hear,” says
Jason. “I am sorry to hear of my Lady Rackrent’s acci-
dent.”
“T’m much obliged to you, and so is her ladyship, I’m
sure,” answered Sir Condy, still stiff; and there was an-
other sort of a silence, which seemed to lie the heaviest on
my son Jason.
“ Sir Condy,” says he at last, seeing Sir Condy disposing
himself to go to sleep again, “Sir Condy, I dare say you
recollect mentioning to me the little memorandum you
gave to Lady Rackrent about the £500-a-year jointure.”
“Very true,” said Sir Condy; “ it is all in my recollec-
tion.”
“But if my Lady Rackrent dies, there’s an end of all
jointure,” says Jason.
“Of course,” says Sir Condy.
“ But it’s not a matter of certainty that my Lady Rack-
rent won’t recover,” says Jason.
“Very true, sir,” says my master.
“It’s a fair speculation, then, for you to consider what
the chance of the jointure of those lands, when out of cus-
todiam, will be to you.”
“ Just five hundred a year, I take it, without any specu-
lation at all,” said Sir Condy.
“ That ’s supposing the life dropt, and the custodiam off,
you know; begging your pardon, Sir Condy, who under-
stands business, that is a wrong calculation.”
“Very likely so,” said Sir Condy; “but, Mr. Jason, if
you have anything to say to me this morning about it, I'd
be obliged to you to say it, for I had an indifferent night’s
rest last night, and wouldn’t be sorry to sleep a little this
morning.”
“T have only three words to say, and those more of con-
sequence to you, Sir Condy, than me. You are a little cool,
I observe; but I hope you will not be offended at what I
have brought here in my pocket,” and he pulls out two long
rolls, and showers down golden guineas upon the bed.
1050 IRISH LITERATURE.
“What’s this?” said Sir Condy; “it’s long since ”—
but his pride stops him.
“ All these are your lawful property this minute, Sir
Condy, if you please,” said Jason.
“Not for nothing, I m sure,” said Sir Condy, and laughs
a little. “Nothing for nothing, or I’m under a mistake
with you, Jason.”
“Oh, Sir Condy, we "ll not be indulging ourselves in any
unpleasant retrospects,” says Jason; “it’s my present in-
tention to behave, as I’m sure you will, like a gentleman
in this affair. Here’s two hundred guineas, and a third
I mean to add if you should think proper to make over to
me all your right and title to those lands that you know
of.”
“ I consider of it,” said my master; and a great deal
more, that I was tired listening to, was said by Jason, and
all that, and the sight of the ready cash upon the bed,
worked with his honor; and the short and the long of it
was, Sir Condy gathered up the golden guineas, and tied
them up in a handkerchief, and signed some paper Jason
brought with him as usual, and there was an end of the
business: Jason took himself away, and my master turned
himself round and fell asleep again.
I soon found what had put Jason in such a hurry to con-
clude this business. The little gossoon we had sent off the
day before with my master’s compliments to Mount Juliet’s
Town, and to know how my lady did after her accident,
was stopped early this morning, coming back with his
answer through O’Shaughlin’s Town, at Castle Rackrent,
by my son Jason, and questioned of all he knew of my lady
from the servant at Mount Juliet’s Town; and the gossoon
told him my Lady Rackrent was not expected to live over-
night; so Jason thought it high time to be moving to the
Lodge, to make his bargain with my master about the join-
ture afore it should be too late, and afore the little gossoon
should reach us with the news. My master was greatly
vexed—that is, I may say, as much as ever I seen him—
when he found how he had been taken in; but it was some
comfort to have the ready cash for immediate consumption
in the house, anyway.
And when Judy came up that evening, and brought the
childer to see his honor, he unties the handkerchief, and—
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1051
God bless him! whether it was little or much he had, ’t was
all the same with him—he gives ’em all round guineas
apiece.
“‘Hold up your head,” says my shister to Judy, as Sir
Condy was busy filling out a glass of punch for her eldest
boy—“ Hold up your head, Judy; for who knows but we
may live to see you yet at the head of the Castle Rackrent
estate?”
“é Maybe so,” says she, “ but not the way you are think-
ing of.”
I did not rightly understand which way Judy was look-
ing when she made this speech till a while after.
“Why, Thady, you were telling me yesterday that Sir
Condy had sold all entirely to Jason, and where then does
all them guineas in the handkerchief come from?”
“They are the purchase-money of my lady’s jointure,”
says I.
Judy looks a little bit puzzled at this. “A penny for
your thoughts, Judy,” says my shister; “hark, sure Sir
Condy is drinking her health.”
He was at the table in the room, drinking with the ex-
ciseman and the gauger, who came up to see his honor,
and we were standing over the fire in the kitchen.
“J don’t much care is he drinking my health or not,”
says Judy; “and it is not Sir Condy I’m thinking of, with
all your jokes, whatever he is of me.”
“Sure you wouldn’t refuse to be my Lady Rackrent,
Judy, if you had the offer? ” says I.
“ But if I could do better!” says she.
“ How better?” says I and my shister both at once.
“ How better?” says she. “ Why, what signifies it to be
my Lady Rackrent and no castle? Sure what good is the
car, and no horse to draw it?”
“ And where will ye get the horse, Judy?” says I.
“ Never mind that,” says she; “ maybe it is your own son
Jason might find that.”
“ Jason!” says I; “don't be trusting to him, Judy. Sir
Condy, as I have good reason to know, spoke well of you’
when Jason spoke very indifferently of you, Judy.”
“No matter,” says Judy; “ it ’s often men speak the con-
trary just to what they think of us.”
“ And you the same way of them, no doubt,” answered I.
1052 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Nay, don’t be denying it, Judy, for I think the better of
ye for it, and shouldn’t be proud to call ye the daughter of a
shister’s son of mine, if I was to hear ye talk ungrateful,
and any way disrespectful of his honor.”
“What disrespect,” says she, “to say I’d rather, if it
was my luck, be the wife of another man?”
“You ’ll have no luck, mind my words, Judy,” says I;
and all I remembered about my poor master’s goodness in
tossing up for her afore he married at all came across me,
and I had a choking in my throat that hindered me to say
more.
“Better luck, anyhow, Thady,” says she, “than to be
like some folk, following the fortunes of them that have
none left.”
“Oh! King of Glory!” says I, “hear the pride and un-
gratitude of her, and he giving his last guineas but a min-
ute ago to her childer, and she with the fine shawl on her
he made her a present of but yesterday!”
“Oh, troth, Judy, you ’re wrong now,” says my shister,
looking at the shawl.
“ And was not he wrong yesterday, then,” says she, “ to
be telling me I was greatly altered, to affront me?”
“ But, Judy,” says I, “ what is it brings you here then at
all in the mind you are in; is it to make Jason think the
better of you?”
“I tell you no more of my secrets, Thady,” says she,
“nor would have told you this much, had I taken you for
such an unnatural fader as I find you are, not to wish your
own son prefarred to another.”
“ Oh, troth, you are wrong now, Thady,” says my shister.
Well, I was never so put to it in my life; between these
women, and my son, and my master, and all I felt and
thought just now, I could not, upon my conscience, tell
which was the wrong from the right. So I said not a word
more, but was only glad his honor had not the luck to hear
all Judy had been saying of him, for I reckoned it would
have gone nigh to break his heart; not that I was of opinion
he cared for her as much as she and my shister fancied, but
the ungratitude of the whole from Judy might not plase
him; and he could never stand the notion of not being well
spoken of or beloved-like behind his back. Fortunately for
all parties concerned, he was so much elevated at this time,
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1053
there was no danger of his understanding anything, even
if it had reached his ears. There was a great horn at the
Lodge, ever since my master and Captain Moneygawl was
in together, that used to belong originally to the celebrated
Sir Patrick, his ancestor; and his honor was fond often of
telling the story that he learned from me when a child, how
Sir Patrick drank the full of this horn without stopping,
and this was what no other man afore or since could with-
out drawing breath. Now Sir Condy challenged the gau-
ger, who seemed to think little of the horn, to swallow the
contents, and had it filled to the brim with punch; and the
gauger said it was what he could not do for nothing, but
he'd hold Sir Condy a hundred guineas he’d do it.
“Done,” says my master; “Ill lay you a hundred gol-
den guineas to a tester you don’t.”
“Done,” says the gauger; and done and done’s enough
between two gentlemen. The gauger was cast, and my
master won the bet, and thought he ’d won a hundred guin-
eas, but by the wording it was adjudged to be only a tester
that was his due by the exciseman. It was all one to him;
he was as well pleased, and I was glad to see him in such
spirits again.
The gauger—bad luck to him!—was the man that next
proposed to my master to try himself, could he take at a
draught the contents of the great horn.
“Sir Patrick’s horn!” said his honor; “ hand it to me:
III hold you your own bet over again Ill swallow it.”
“Done,” says the gauger; “I’ll lay ye anything at all
you do no such thing.”
“ A hundred guineas to sixpence I do,” says he; “ bring
me the handkerchief.” I was loth, knowing he meant the
handkerchief with the gold in it, to bring it out in such
company, and his honor not very able to reckon it. “ Bring
me the handkerchief, then, Thady,” says he, and stamps
with his foot; so with that I pulls it out of my greatcoat
pocket, where I had put it for safety. Oh how it grieved
me to see the guineas counting upon the table, and they the
last my master had! Says Sir Condy to me: “ Your hand
is steadier than mine to-night, old Thady, and that’s a
wonder; fill you the horn for me.” And so, wishing his
honor success, I did; but I filled it, little thinking of what
would befall him. He swallows it down, and drops like
1064 IRISH LITERATURE.
one ghot. We lifts him up, and he was speechless, and
quite black in the face. We put him to bed, and in a short
time he wakened, raving with a fever on his brain. He
was shocking either to see or hear.
“ Judy! Judy! have you no touch of feeling? Won't you
stay to help us nurse him?” says I to her, and she putting
on her shawl to go out of the house.
“ I'm frightened to see him,” says she, “and wouldn't
nor couldn’t stay in it: and what use? He can’t last till
the morning.” With that she ran off. There was none but
my shister and myself left near him of all the many friends
he had.
The fever came and went, and came and went, and lasted
five days, and the sixth he was sensible for a few minutes,
and said to me, knowing me very well, “I’m in a burning
pain all withinside of me, Thady.” I could not speak, but
my shister asked him would he have this thing or t’ other
to do him good? “ No,” says he, “ nothing will do me good
no more,” and he gave a terrible screech with the torture
he was in; then again a minute’s ease—“ brought to this
by drink,” says he. “ Where are all the friends?—where ’s
Judy? Gone, hey? Ay, Sir Condy has been a fool all his
days,” said he; and there was the last word he spoke, and
died. He had but a very poor funeral after all.
If you want to know any more, I ’m not very well able to
tell you; but my Lady Rackrent did not die, as was ex-
pected of her, but was only disfigured in the face ever after
by the fall and bruises she got; and she and Jason, imme-
diately after my poor master’s death, set about going to
law about that jointure; the memorandum not being on
stamped paper, some say it is worth nothing, others again
it may do; others say Jason won’t have the lands at any
rate; many wishes it so. For my part, I’m tired wishing
for anything in this world, after all I’ve seen in it; but
I'll say nothing—it would be a folly to be getting myself
ill-will in my old age. Jason did not marry, nor think of
marrying, Judy, as I prophesied, and I am not sorry for
it: who is? As for all I have here set down from memory
and hearsay of the family there’s nothing but truth in it
from beginning to end. That you may depend upon, for
where ’s the use of telling lies about the things which
everybody knows as well as I do?
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1055
[The Editor could have readily made the catastrophe of
Sir Condy’s history more dramatic and more pathetic, if
he thought it allowable to varnish the plain round tale of
faithful Thady. He lays it before the English reader as a
specimen of manners and character which are perhaps un-
known in England. Indeed, the domestic habits of no
nation in Europe were less known to the English than those
of their sister country till within these few years.
Mr. Young’s picture of Ireland, in his tour through that
country, was the first faithful portrait of its inhabitants.
All the features in the foregoing sketch were taken from
the life, and they are characteristic of that mixture of
quickness, simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation,
disinterestedness, shrewdness, and blunder, which, in dif-
ferent forms and with various success, has been brought
upon the stage or delineated in novels.
It is a problem of difficult solution to determine whether
a union will hasten or retard the amelioration of this coun-
try. The few gentlemen of education who now reside in
this country will resort to England. They are few, but
they are in nothing inferior to men of the same rank in
Great Britain. The best that can happen will be the in-
troduction of British manufacturers in their places.
Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans,
teach the Irish to drink beer? or did they learn from the
Irish to drink whisky?]
THE ORIGINALITY OF IRISH BULLS
EXAMINED.
From ‘ An Essay on Irish Bulls.’
The difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd of Irish
bulls one that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united
merits of pre-eminent absurdity and indisputable origi-
nality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine. Many
bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of for-
eign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivaled
in their kind, may be matched in all their capital points:
for instance, there is not a more celebrated bull than Paddy
1056 IRISH LITERATURE.
Blake’s. When Paddy heard an English gentleman speak-
ing of the fine echo at the lake of Killarney, which repeats
the sound forty times, he very promptly observed : “ Faith,
that ’s nothing at all to the echo in my father’s garden, in
the county of Galway: if you say to it, ‘How do you do,
Paddy Blake?’ it will answer, ‘Pretty well, I thank you,
sir.”
Now this echo of Paddy Blake, which has long been the
admiration of the world, is not a prodigy unique in its
kind; it can be matched by one recorded in the immortal
works of the great Lord Verulam.
“T remember well,” says this father of philosophy, “ that
when I went to the echo at Port Charenton, there was an
old Parisian that took it to be the work of spirits, and of
good spirits; ‘for,’ said he, ‘call Satan, and the echo will
not deliver back the devil’s name, but will say Va-t-en.’ (go
away) ”
The Parisian echo is surely superior to the Hibernian!
Paddy Blake’s simply understood and practiced the com-
mon rules of good breeding; but the Port Charenton echo
is “instinct with spirit,” and endowed with a nice moral
sense.
Among the famous bulls recorded by the illustrious Joe
Miller, there is one which has been continually quoted as
an example of original Irish genius. An English gentle-
man was writing a letter in a coffee-house, and perceiving
that an Irishman stationed behind him was taking that
liberty which Hephestion used with his friend Alexander,
instead of putting his seal upon the lips of the curious
impertinent, the Englishman thought proper to reprove
the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical
justice; he concluded writing his letter in these words: “I
would say more, but a —— tall Irishman is reading over
my shoulder every word I write.”
“ Yau lie, you scoundrel! ” said the self-convicted Hiber-
nian.
This blunder is unquestionably excellent; but it is not
originally Irish : it comes, with other riches, from the East,
as the reader may find by looking into a book by M. Gal-
land, entitled, “The Remarkable Sayings of the Eastern
Nations.”
“A learned man was writing to a friend; a troublesome
- MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1057
fellow was beside him, who was looking over his shoulder
at what he was writing. The learned man, who perceived
this, continued writing in these words, ‘If an imperti-
nent chap, who stands beside me, were not looking at what
I write, I would write many other things to you which
should be known only to you and to me.’
“The troublesome fellow, who was reading on, now
thought it incumbent upon him to speak, and said, ‘I
swear to you that I have not read or looked at what you
are writing.’
“The learned man replied, ‘ Blockhead, as you are, why
then do you say to me what you are now saying?’”
Making allowance for the difference of manners in eas-
tern and northern nations, there is certainly such a sim-
ilarity between this Oriental anecdote and Joe Miller’s
story, that we may conclude the latter is stolen from the
former. Now an Irish bull must be a species of blunder
peculiar to Ireland; those that we have hitherto examined,
though they may be called Irish bulls by the ignorant
vulgar, have no right, title, or claim to such a distinction.
‘We should invariably exclude from that class all blunders
which can be found in another country. For instance, a
speech of the celebrated Irish beauty, Lady C——, has been
called a bull; but as a parallel can be produced, in the
speech of an English nobleman, it tells for nothing. When
her ladyship was presented at court, his Majesty George
II. politely hoped “ that, since her arrival in England, she
had been entertained with the gayeties of London.”
“O yes, please your Majesty, I have seen every sight in
London worth seeing, except a coronation.”
This naiveté is certainly not equal to that of the English
earl marshal, who, when his king found fault with some
arrangement at his coronation, said, “ Please your Maj-
esty I hope it will be better the next time.”
A naiveté of the same species entailed a heavy tax upon
the inhabitants of Beaune, in France. Beaune is famous
for Burgundy; and Henry IV. passing through his king-
dom, stopped there, and was well entertained by his loyal
subjects. His Majesty praised the Burgundy which they
set before him—“ It was excellent! it was admirable!”
“O sire!” cried they, “do you think this excellent? we
have much finer Burgundy than this.”
67
1058 IRISH LITERATURE.
“ Have you so? then you can afford to pay for it,” cried
Henry IV.; and he laid a double tax thenceforward upon
the Burgundy of Beaune.
Of the same class of blunders is the following speech,
which we actually heard not long ago from an Irishman :—
“Please your worship, he sent me to the devil, and I
came straight to your honor.”
We thought this an original Irish blunder, till we recol-
lected its prototype in Marmontel’s ‘ Annette and Lubin.’
Lubin concludes his harangue with, “The bailiff sent us
to the devil, and we came to put ourselves under your pro-
tection, my lord.”
The French, at least in former times, were celebrated
for politeness; yet we meet with a naive compliment of a
Frenchman which would have been accounted a bull if it
had been found in Ireland :—
A gentleman was complimenting Madame Denis on the
manner in which she had just acted Zara. “To act that
part,” said she, “a person should be young and hand-
some.” “Ah, madam!” replied the complimenter naive-
ment, “ you are a complete proof of the contrary.”
We know not any original Irish blunder superior to this,
unless it be that which Lord Orford pronounced to be the
best bull that he had ever heard :—
“T hate that woman,” said a gentleman, looking at one
who had been his nurse, “I hate that woman, for she
changed me at nurse.”
Lord Orford particularly admires this bull, because in
the confusion of the blunderer’s ideas he is not clear even
of his personal identity. Philosophers will not perhaps be
so ready as his lordship has been to call this a blunder of
the first magnitude. Those who have never been initiated
into the mysteries of metaphysics may have the presump-
tuous ignorance to fancy that they understand what is
meant by the common words I or me; but the able meta-
physican knows better than Lord Orford’s changeling how
to prove, to our satisfaction, that we know nothing of the
matter.
“Personal identity,” says Locke, “consists not in the
identity of substance, but in the identity of consciousness,
wherein Socrates and the present Mayor of Quinborough
agree they are the same person; if the same Socrates sleep-
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1059
ing and waking do not partake of the same consciousness,
Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person; and
to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates
thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of,
would be no more right than to punish one twin for what
his brother twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because
their outsides are so like that they could not be distin-
guished ; for such twins have been seen.”
We may presume that our Hibernian’s consciousness
could not retrograde to the time when he was changed at
nurse; consequently there was no continuity of identity
between the infant and the man who expressed his hatred
of the nurse for perpetrating the fraud. At all events, the
confusion of identity which excited Lord Orford’s admi-
ration in our Hibernian is by no means unprecedented in
France, England, or ancient Greece, and consequently it
cannot be an instance of national idiosyncrasy, or an Irish
bull. We find a similar blunder in Spain, in the time of
Cervantes :—
“Pray tell me Squire,” says the duchess, in ‘Don
Quixote,’ “is not your master the person whose history is
printed under the name of the sage Hidalgo Don Quixote
de la Mancha, who professes himself the admirer of one
Dulcinea del Toboso? ”
“The very same, my lady,” answered Sancho; “and I
myself am that very squire of his who is mentioned, or
ought to be mentioned in that history, unless they have
changed me in the cradle.”
In Moliére’s ‘ Amphitryon’ there is a dialogue between
Mercure and Sosie evidently taken from the Attic Lucian.
Sosie, being completely puzzled out of his personal identity,
if not out of his senses, says literally, “Of my being my-
self I begin to doubt in good earnest; yet when I feel my-
self, and when I recollect myself, it seems to me that I
am I.”
We see that the puzzle about identity proves at last to be
of Grecian origin. It is really edifying to observe how
those things which have long been objects of popular ad-
miration shrink and fade when exposed to the light of
strict examination. An experienced critic proposed that
a work should be written to inquire into the pretensions
of modern writers to original invention, to trace their
1060 IRISH LITERATURE.
thefts, and to restore the property to the ancient owners.
Such a work would require powers and erudition beyond
what can be expected from any ordinary individual; the
labor must be shared among numbers, and we are proud
to assist in ascertaining the rightful property even of bulls
and blunders; though without pretending, like some lit-
erary bloodhounds, to follow up a plagiarism where com-
mon sagacity is at a fault.
LITTLE DOMINICK.
From ‘ An Essay on Irish Bulls.’
Little Dominick was born at Fort Reilly, in Ireland, and
was bred nowhere till his tenth year; when he was sent to
Wales, to learn manners, and grammar, at the school of
Mr. Owen ap Davies ap Jenkins ap Jones. This gentleman
had reason to think himself the greatest of men; for he
had, over his chimney-piece, a well-smoked genealogy, duly
attested, tracing his ancestry in a direct line up to Noah;
and, moreover, he was nearly related to the learned ety-
mologist, who, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, wrote a
folio volume to prove that the language of Adam and Eve
in Paradise was pure Welsh. With such causes to be
proud, Mr. Owen ap Davies ap Jenkins ap Jones was ex-
cusable for sometimes seeming to forget that a school-
master is but a man. He, however, sometimes entirely
forgot that a boy is but a boy; and this happened most
frequently with respect to Little Dominick.
This unlucky wight was flogged every morning by his
master; not for his vices, but for his vicious constructions:
and laughed at by his companions every evening, for his
idiomatic absurdities. They would probably have been
inclined to sympathize in his misfortunes, but that he was
the only Irish boy at school; and as he was at a distance
from all his relations, and without a friend to take his
part, he was a just object of obloquy and derision. Every
sentence he spoke was a bull, every two words he put to-
gether proved a false concord, and every sound he artic-
ulated betrayed the brogue. But as he possessed some of
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1061
the characteristic boldness of those who have been dipped
in the Shannon, though he was only little Dominick, he
showed himself able and willing to fight his own battles
with the host of foes by whom he was encompassed. Some
of these, it was said, were of nearly twice his stature.
This may be exaggerated: but it is certain that our hero
sometimes ventured, with sly Irish humor, to revenge him-
self on his most powerful tyrant, by mimicking the Welsh
accent, in which Mr. Owen ap Jones said to him—“ Cot
pless me, you plockit, and shall I never learn you Enclish
crammar?”
It was whispered in the ear of this Dionysius that our
little hero was a mimic, and he was now treated with in-
creased severity.
The midsummer holidays approached; but he feared
that they would shine no holidays for him. He had written
to his mother to tell her that school would break up on the
21st; and to beg an answer, without fail, by return of post:
but no answer came.
It was now nearly two months since he had heard from
his dear mother, or any of his friends in Ireland. His
spirits began to sink under the pressure of these accu-
mulated misfortunes: he slept little, eat less, and played
not at all. Indeed, nobody would play with him on equal
terms, because he was nobody’s equal: his schoolfellows
continued to consider him as a being, if not of a different
species, at least of a different cast from themselves.
Mr. Owen ap Jones’ triumph over the little Irish plockit
was nearly complete, for the boy’s heart was almost broken,
when there came to the school a new scholar—O, how un-
like the others!—His name was Edwards: he was the son
of a neighboring Welsh gentleman; and he had himself
the spirit of a gentleman. When he saw how poor Domi-
nick was persecuted, he took him under his protection;
fought his battles with the Welsh boys; and instead of
laughing at him for speaking Irish, he endeavored to
teach him to speak English. In his answers to the first
questions Edwards ever asked him, Little Dominick made
two blunders, which set all his other companions in a roar;
yet Edwards would not allow them to be genuine bulls.
In answer to the question—‘ Who is your father?”
1062 IRISH LITERATURE.
Dominick said, with a deep sigh—“ I have no father—I
am an orphan—I have only a mother.”
“Have you any brothers and sisters?”
“No! I wish I had; for perhaps they would love me,
and not laugh at me,” said Dominick, with tears in his eyes ;
“but I have no brothers but myself.”
One day Mr. Owen ap Jones came into the schoolroom
with an open letter in his hand, saying—“ Here, you little
Irish plockit, here ’s a letter from your mother.”
The little Irish blockhead started from his form; and,
throwing his grammar on the floor, leaped up higher than
he or any boy in the school had ever been seen to leap be-
fore; then, clapping his hands, he exclaimed—“ A letter
from my mother! And will I hear the letter?—And will
I see her once more?—And will I go home these holidays?
—O, then I will be too happy!”
“There ’s no tanger of that,” said Mr. Owen ap Jones;
“for your mother, like a wise ooman, writes me here, that,
py the atvice of your cardian, to oom she is going to be
married, she will not pring you home to Ireland till I send
her word you are perfect in your Enclish crammar at
least.”
“T have my lesson perfect, sir,” said Dominick, taking
his grammar up from the floor; “ will I say it now?”
“No, you plockit, you will not; and I will write your
mother word, you have proke Priscian’s head four times
this tay, since her letter came.”
Little Dominick, for the first time, was seen to burst
into tears—“ Will I hear the letter?—Will I see my
mother?—Will I go home?”
“You Irish plockit!” continued the relentless gram-
marian: “you Irish plockit, will you never learn the dif-
ference between shall and will?”
The Welsh boys all grinned, except Edwards, who
hummed loud enough to be heard—
“ And will I see him once again t
And will I hear him speak *”
Many of the boys were, unfortunately, too ignorant to feel
the force of the quotation; but Mr. Owen ap Jones un-
derstood it, turned on his heel, and walked off.
Soon afterwards, he summoned Dominick to his awful
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1063
desk; and pointing with his ruler to the following page
in Harris’ ‘ Hermes,’ bade him “ reat it, and understant it,”
if he could.
Little Dominick read, but could not understand.
“Then reat it alout, you plockit.”
Dominick read aloud—
“There is nothing appears so clearly an object of the
mind or intellect only as the future does: since we can find
no place for its existence anywhere else: not but the same,
if we consider, is equally true of the past—”
“ Well, co on—What stops the plockit?—Can’t you reat
Enclish now?”
“Yes, sir; but I was trying to understand it—I was
considering, that this is like what they would call an Irish
bull, if I had said it.”
Little Dominick could not explain what he meant in
English, that Mr. Owen ap Jones would understand; and
to punish him for his impertinent observation, the boy was
doomed to learn all that Harris and Lowth have written
to explain the nature of shall and will.—The reader, if he
be desirous of knowing the full extent of the penance en-
joined, may consult Lowth’s Grammar, p. 52, ed. 1799; and
Harris’ ‘ Hermes,’ pp. 10, 11, and 12, fourth edition.
Undismayed at the length of his task, Little Dominick
only said—‘ I hope, if I say it all, without missing a word,
you will not give my mother a bad account of me and my
grammar studies, sir? ”
“Say it all first, without missing a word, and then I
shall see what I shall say,” replied Mr. Owen ap Jones.
Even the encouragement of this oracular answer excited
the boy’s fond hopes so keenly, that he lent his little soul
to the task; learned it perfectly; said it at night, without
missing one word, to his friend Edwards; and said it the
next morning, without missing one word, to his master.
“And now, sir,” said the boy, looking up, “ will you
write to my mother?—And shall I see her? And shall I go
home?”
“Tell me, first, whether you understand all this that
you have learned so cliply?” said Mr. Owen ap Jones.
That was more than his bond. Our hero’s countenance
fell; and he acknowledged that he did not understand it
perfectly.
1064 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Then I cannot write a coot account of you and your
crammar studies to your mother; my conscience coes
against it!” said the conscientious Mr. Owen ap Jones.
No entreaties could move him. Dominick never saw
the letter that was written to his mother; but he felt the
consequence. She wrote word, this time punctually by re-
turn of the post, that she was sorry she could not send for
him home these holidays, as she had heard so bad an ac-
count from Mr. Owen ap Jones, &c., and as she thought it
her duty not to interrupt the course of his education,
especially his grammar studies.
Little Dominick heaved many a sigh when he saw the
packings up of all his schoolfellows; and dropped a few
tears as he looked out of the window, and saw them, one
after another, get on their Welsh ponies, and gallop off
towards their homes.
“T have no home to go to!” said he.
“Yes, you have,” cried Edwards; “and our horses are
at the door, to carry us there.”
“To Ireland? Me! the horses!” said the poor boy, quite
bewildered.
“No; the horses cannot carry you to Ireland,” said
Edwards, laughing good-naturedly ; “ but you have a home,
now, in England. I asked my father to let me bring you
home with me; and he says—‘ Yes,’ like a dear, good
father, and has sent the horses—Come, let ’s away.”
“ But will Mr. Owen ap Jones let me go?”
“Yes! he dare not refuse; for my father has a living in
his gift, that Owen ap Jones wants, and which he will not
have if he do not change his tune to you.”
Little Dominick could not speak one word, his heart
was so full.
No boy could be happier than he was during these holi-
days: “the genial current of his soul,” which had been
frozen by unkindness, flowed with all its natural freedom
and force.
Whatever his reasons might be, Mr. Owen ap Jones, from
this time forward, was observed to change his manners
towards his Irish pupil. He never more complained, un-
justly, of his preaking Priscian’s head; seldom called him
Irish plockit; and once, would have flogged a Welsh boy
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1065
for taking up this cast-off expression of the master’s but
that the Irish blockhead begged the culprit off.
Little Dominick sprang forward rapidly in his studies;
he soon surpassed every boy in the school, his friend Ed-
wards only excepted. In process of time his guardian
removed him to a higher seminary of education. Edwards
hada tutor athome. The friends separated. Afterwards,
they followed different professions, in distant parts of the
world; and they neither saw, nor heard, any more of each
other, for many years.
Dominick, now no longer little Dominick, went over to
India, as private secretary to one of our commanders-in-
chief. How he got into this situation, or by what grada-
tions he rose in the world, we are not exactly informed;
we know only that he was the reputed author of a much
admired pamphlet on India affairs; that the dispatches of
the general to whom he was secretary were remarkably
well written; and that Dominick O’Reilly, Esq., returned
to England, after several years’ absence, not miraculously
rich, but with a fortune equal to his wishes. His wishes
were not extravagant: his utmost ambition was, to return
to his native country with a fortune that should enable
him to live independently of all the world; especially of
some of his relations, who had not used him well. His
mother was no more.
On his first arrival in London, one of the first things
he did was to read the Irish newspapers. To his inex-
pressible joy he saw the estate of Fort Reilly advertised
to be sold—the very estate which had formerly belonged
to his own family. Away he posted, directly, to an attor-
ney's in Cecil Street, who was empowered to dispose of the
and.
When this attorney produced a map of the well-known
demesne, and an elevation of that house in which he spent
the happiest hours of his infancy, his heart was so touched,
that he was on the point of paying down more for an old
ruin than a good new house would cost. The attorney
acted honestly by his client, and seized this moment to
exhibit a plan of the stabling and offices; which, as some-
times is the case in Ireland, were in a style far superior
to the dwelling-house. Our hero surveyed these with
transport. He rapidly planned various improvements in
1066 IRISH LITERATURE.
imagination, and planted certain favorite spots in the de
mesne! During this time the attorney was giving direc-
tions to a clerk about some other business; suddenly the
name of Owen ap Jones struck his ear.—He started.
“Let him wait in the front parlor: his money is not
forthcoming,” said the attorney, “and if he keep Edwards
in jail till he rots—”
“ Edwards! Good heavens! in jail! What Edwards?”
exclaimed our hero.
It was his friend Edwards!
The attorney told him that Mr. Edwards had been in-
volved in great distress, by taking on himself his father’s
debts, which had been incurred in exploring a mine in
Wales; that, of all the creditors, none had refused to com-
pound, except a Welsh parson, who had been presented to
his living by old Edwards; and that this Mr. Owen ap Jones
had thrown young Mr. Edwards into jail for the debt.
“What is the rascal’s demand? He shall be paid off
this instant,” cried Dominick, throwing down the plan of
Fort Reilly; “send for him up, and let me pay him off on
this spot.”
“Had we not best finish our business first, about the
O'Reilly estate, sir? ” said the attorney.
“No, sir; damn the O’Reilly estate!” cried he, huddling
the maps together on the desk; and, taking up the bank-
notes, whic’ he had begun to reckon for the purchase
money—“I beg your pardon, sir—if you knew the facts,
you would excuse me.—Why does not this rascal come up
to be paid?”
The attorney, thunderstruck by this Hibernian impet-
uosity, had not yet found time to take his pen out of his
mouth. As he sat transfixed in his arm-chair, O'Reilly
ran to the head of the stairs, and called out, in a stentorian
voice, “ Here, you Mr. Owen ap Jones; come up and be
paid off this instant, or you shall never be paid at all.”
Upstairs hobbled the old schoolmaster, as fast as the
gout and Welsh ale would let him—“ Cot pless me, that
voice? ” he began—
“Where ’s your bond, sir? ” said the attorney.
“Safe here, Cot be praised!” said the terrified Owen ap
Jones, pulling out of his bosom first a blue pocket-hand-
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1067
kerchief, and then a tattered Welsh grammar, which
O'Reilly kicked to the farther end of the room.
“ Here is my pond,” said he, “in the crammar,” which he
gathered from the ground; then, fumbling over the leaves,
he at length unfolded the precious deposit.
O'Reilly saw the bond, seized it, looked at the sum, paid
it into the attorney’s hands, tore the seal from the bond;
then, without looking at old Owen ap Jones, whom he
dared not trust himself to speak to, he clapped his hat on
his head, and rushed out of the room. He was, however,
obliged to come back again, to ask where Edwards was to
be found.
“In the King’s Bench prison, sir,” said the attorney.
“ But am I to understand,” cried he, holding up the map
of the O'Reilly estate, “ am I to understand that you have
no further wish for this bargain?”
“Yes—No—I mean, you are to understand that I’m
off,” replied our hero, without looking back—“ I’m off—
That’s plain English.”
Arrived at the King’s Bench prison, he hurried to the
apartment where Edwards was confined—The bolts flew
back; for even the turnkeys seemed to catch our hero’s
enthusiasm.
“ Edwards, my dear boy ! how do you do?—Here’s a bond
debt, justly due to you for my education—O, never mind
asking any unnecessary questions; only just make haste
out of this undeserved abode—Our old rascal is paid off—
Owen ap Jones you know—Well how the man stares?—
Why, now, will you have the assurance to pretend to forget
who I am?—and must I spake,” continued he, assuming
the tone of his childhood—“ and must I spake to you again
in my old Irish brogue, before you will ricollict your own
Little Dominick?”
When his friend Edwards was out of prison, and when
our hero had leisure to look into the business, he returned
to the attorney, to see that Mr. Owen ap Jones had been
satisfied.
“Sir,” said the attorney, “I have paid the plaintiff in
this suit, and he is satisfied: but I must say,” added he,
with a contemptuous smile, “ that you Irish gentlemen are
rather in too great a hurry in doing business; business, sir,
is a thing that must be done slowly, to be well done.”
1068 IRISH LITERATURE.
“T am ready now to do business as slowly as you please;
but when my friend was in prison, I thought the quicker
I did his business the better. Now tell me what mistake I
have made, and I will rectify it instantly.”
“Tnstantly! °T is well, sir, with your promptitude, that
you have to deal with what prejudice thinks so very un-
common—an honest attorney. Here are some bank-notes
of yours, sir, amounting to a good round sum! You have
made a little blunder in this business: you left me the
penalty, instead of the principal, of the bond—just twice
as much as you should have done.”
“Just twice as much as was in the bond; but not twice
as much as I should have done, nor half as much as I
should have done, in my opinion!” said O’Reilly: “but
whatever I did, it was with my eyes open. I was per-
suaded you were an honest man; in which, you see, I was
not mistaken; and as a man of business, I knew that you
would pay Mr. Owen ap Jones only his due. The remain-
der of the money I meant, and now mean, should lie in your
hands for my friend Edwards’ use. I feared he would not
have taken it from my hands: I therefore left it in yours.
To have taken my friend out of prison, merely to let him
go back again to-day, for want of money to keep himself
clear with the world, would have been a blunder, indeed!
but not an Irish blunder: our Irish blunders are never
blunders of the heart!”
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.
Mr. Gresham, a Bristol merchant, who had, by honor-
able industry and economy, accumulated a considerable
fortune, retired from business to a new house which he had
built upon the Downs, near Clifton. Mr. Gresham, how-
ever, did not imagine that a new house alone could make
him happy. He did not propose to live in idleness and ex-
travagance; for such a life would have been equally in-
compatible with his habits and his principles. He was
fond of children; and as he had no sons, he determined to
adopt one of his relations. He had two nephews, and he
invited both of them to his house, that he might have an
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1069
opportunity of judging of their dispositions, and of the
habits which they had acquired.
Hal and Benjamin, Mr. Gresham’s nephews, were each
about ten years old. They had been educated very differ-
ently. Hal was the son of the elder branch of the family.
His father was a gentleman, who spent rather more than
he could afford; and Hal, from the example of the servants
in his father’s family, with whom he had passed the first
years of his childhood, learned to waste more of everything
than he used. He had been told, that “ gentlemen should
be above being careful and saving;” and he had unfor-
tunately imbibed a notion that extravagance was the sign
of a generous disposition, and economy of an avaricious
one.
Benjamin, on the contrary, had been taught habits of
care and foresight. His father had but a very small for-
tune, and was anxious that his son should early learn that
economy insures independence, and sometimes puts it in the
power of those who are not very rich to be very generous.
The morning after these two boys arrived at their
uncle’s, they were eager to see all the rooms in the house.
Mr. Gresham accompanied them, and attended to their
remarks and exclamations.
“ Oh! what an excellent motto!” exclaimed Ben, when
he read the following words, which were written in large
characters over the chimneypiece, in his uncle’s spacious
kitchen :-—
“WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.”
“ Waste not, want not!” repeated his cousin Hal, in
rather a contemptuous tone; “I think it looks stingy to
servants; and no gentleman’s servants, cooks especially,
would like to have such a mean motto always staring them
in the face.” Ben, who was not so conversant as his cousin
in the ways of cooks and gentlemen’s servants, made no
reply to these observations.
Mr. Gresham was called away whilst his nephews were
looking at the other rooms in the house. Some time after-
wards he heard their voices in the hall.
“ Boys,” said he, “ what are doing there?” “Nothing,
sir,” said Hal; “ you were called away from us, and we did
1070 IRISH LITERATURE.
not know which way to go.” “And have you nothing to
do?” said Mr. Gresham.
“No, sir, nothing,” answered Hal, in a careless tone,
like one who was well content with the state of habitual
idleness.
“No, sir, nothing!” replied Ben, in a voice of lamenta-
tion.
“Come,” said Mr. Gresham, “ if you have nothing to do,
lads, will you unpack these two parcels for me?”
The two parcels were exactly alike, both of them well
tied up with good whip-cord. Ben took his parcel to a
table, and, after breaking off the sealing-wax, began care-
fully to examine the knot, and then to untie it. Hal stood
still, exactly in the spot where the parcel was put into his
hands, and tried first at one corner, and then at another, to
pull the string off by force.
“T wish these people wouldn’t tie up their parcels so
tight, as if they were never to be undone,” cried he, as he
tugged at the cord; and he pulled the knot closer instead
of loosening it.
“Ben! why, how did you get yours undone, man?—
What’s in your parcel?—I wonder what is in mine. I
wish I could get this string off—I must cut it.”
“Oh, no,” said Ben, who now had undone the last knot
of his parcel, and who drew out the length of string with
exultation, “don’t cut it, Hal. Look what a nice cord this
is, and yours is the same: it’s a pity to cut it; ‘ Waste not,
want not!’ you know.”
“Pooh!” said Hal, “what signifies a bit of pack-
thread?”
“Tt is whip-cord.”
“Well, whip-cord! what signifies a bit of whip-cord! you
can get a bit of whip-cord twice as long as that for two-
pence; and who cares for two-pence! Not I, for one! so
here it goes,” cried Hal, drawing out his knife; and he cat
the cord, precipitately, in sundry places.
“Lads! have you undone the parcels for me?” said Mr.
Gresham, opening the parlor-door as he spoke. “ Yes, sir,”
cried Hal; and he dragged off his half-cut, half-entangled
string,—“ here’s the parcel.” “And here’s my parcel,
uncle; and here’s the string,” said Ben. “ You may keep
the string for your pains,” said Mr. Gresham. “ Thank
MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1071
you, sir,” said Ben; “ what an excellent whip-cord it is!”
“ And you, Hal,” continued Mr. Gresham, “ you may keep
your string too, if it will be of any use to you.” “It will
e of no use to me, thank you, sir,” said Hal. “No, I am
afraid not, if this be it,” said his uncle, taking up the
jagged, knotted remains of Hal’s cord.
A few days after this, Mr. Gresham gave to each of his
nephews a new top.
“But how’s this?” said Hal; “these tops have no
strings; what shall we do for strings?” “I have a string
that will do very well for mine,” said Ben; and he pulled
out of his pocket the fine, long, smooth string which had
tied up the parcel. With this he soon set up his top, which
spun admirably well.
“Oh, how I wish I had but a string!” said Hal; “ what
shall I do for a string? Ill tell you what; I can use the
string that goes round my hat!” “But then,” said Ben,
“what will you do for a hat-band?” “I” manage to do
without one,” said Hal; and he took the string off his hat
for his top. It soon was worn through; and he split his
top by driving the peg too tightly into it. His cousin Ben
let him set up his the next day; but Hal was not more for-
tunate or more careful when he meddled with other peo-
ple’s things than when he managed his own. He had
scarcely played half an hour before he split it, by driving
in the peg too violently.
Ben bore this misfortune with good humor. “Come,”
said he, “ it can’t be helped: but give me the string, because
that may still be of use for something else.”
It happened some time afterwards that a lady, who had
been intimately acquainted with Hal’s mother at Bath,
now arrived at Clifton. She was informed by his mother
that Hal was at Mr. Gresham’s; and her sons, who were
friends of his, came to see him, and invited him to spend
the next day with them.
Hal joyfully accepted the invitation. He was always
glad to go out to dine, because it gave him something to do,
something to think of, or at least something to say. Be-
sides this, he had been educated to think it was a fine thing
to visit fine people; and Lady Diana Sweepstakes (for that
was the name of his mother’s acquaintance) was a very
fine lady, and her two sons intended to be very great gen-
1072 IRISH LITERATURE.
tlemen. He was in a prodigious hurry when these young
gentlemen knocked at his uncle’s door the next day; but
just as he got to the hall door, little Patty called to him
from the top of the stairs, and told him that he had dropped
his pocket-handkerchief.
“Pick it up, then, and bring it to me, quick, can’t you,
child?” cried Hal, “for Lady Di’s sons are waiting for
me.”
Little Patty did not know anything about Lady Di’s
sons; but she was very good-natured, and saw that her
cousin Hal was, for some reason or other, in a desperate
hurry, so she ran downstairs as fast as she possibly could,
towards the landing-place, where the handkerchief lay;
but, alas! before she reached the handkerchief, she fell,
rolling down a whole flight of stairs, and when her fall
was at last stopped by the landing-place, she did not ery,
but she writhed as if she was in great pain.
“ Where are you hurt, my love?” said Mr. Gresham, who
came instantly, on hearing the noise of some one falling
downstairs. “ Where are you hurt, my dear?”
“Here, papa,” said the little girl, touching her ankle;
“T believe I am hurt here, but not much,” added she, trying
to rise; “ only it hurts me when I move.” “Ill carry you;
don’t move, then,” said her father; and he took her up in
his arms. “ My shoe; I ’ve lost one of my shoes,” said she.
Ben looked for it upon the stairs, and he found it stick-
ing in a loop of whip-cord, which was entangled round one
of the banisters. When this cord was drawn forth, it ap-
peared that it was the very same jagged entangled piece
which Hal had pulled off his parcel. He had diverted him-
self with running up and downstairs, whipping the banis-
ters with it, for he thought he could convert it to no better
use; and, with his usual carelessness, he at last left it hang-
ing just where he happened to throw it when the dinner-
bell rang. Poor little Patty’s ankle was terribly sprained,
and Hal reproached himself for his folly, and would have
reproached himself longer, perhaps, if Lady Di Sweep-
stakes’ sons had not hurried him away.
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH.
(17441817,)
RICHARD LovELL EDGEWORTH, an elegant writer and an ingenious
mechanic, was born in 1744, at Edgeworthtown, County Longford,
Ireland, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Oxford.
Being of a mechanical turn of mind, he spent much time in experi-
ments, and invented many ingenious devices, among them a tele-
graph. He was a member of the Irish Parliament, and with
other Trish patriots opposed the Union. He gave great attention
to education and the most practical modes of diffusing it.
In conjunction with his talented daughter, Maria, he wrote a series
of essays on ‘Practical Education,’ and also published a series of
stories for the young with the same view. He wrote a work on
‘Roads and Carriages,’ and began his own memoirs, which were
finished by his daughter. He was a man of varied talent, great
practical knowledge, and philanthropic aims. He died at Hdge-
‘worthtown, in June, 1817.
MY BOYHOOD DAYS.
From ‘ Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq.’
When I was between two and three years old, I was car-
ried over, with my father and mother, to Ireland, to their
house at Edgeworthtown, in the county of Longford. I
remember distinctly several small circumstances, which
happened before I was four years old. This I notice, be-
cause the possibility of remembering from so early an age
has been doubted. When I was about five years old, I was
taught my alphabet: I remember well the appearance of
my hornbook; and once I was beaten for not knowing the
word instep. I recollect as distinctly as if it happened
yesterday, that I had never before heard or spelled that
word. This unjust chastisement put me back a little in
my learning; but as the injustice was afterwards discov-
ered, it saved me in succeeding times from all violence from
my teachers. My mother then taught me to read herself.
I lent my little soul to the business, and I read fiuently
before I was six years old. The first books that were put
into my hands were the Old Testament, and sop’s Fables.
sop’s Fables were scarcely intelligible to me: the frogs
and their kings,—the fox with the bunch of grapes, con-
68 1078
1074 IRISH LITERATURE.
fused my understanding; and the satyr and the traveler ap-
peared to me absolute nonsense. I understood the lion and
the mouse, and was charmed with the generous conduct of
the one, and with the gratitude of the other.
When I began to read the Old Testament, the creation
made a great impression upon my mind: I personified the
Deity as is usual with ignorance. A particular part of my
father’s garden was Paradise: my imagination represented
Adam as walking in this garden; and the whole history
became a drama in my mind. I pitied Adam, was angry
with Eve, and I most cordially hated the devil. What
was meant by Adam’s bruising the serpent’s head, I could
not comprehend, and I frequently asked for explanations.
The history of Joseph and his brethren I perfectly under-
stood, it seized fast hold of my imagination, and of my
feelings. I admired and loved Joseph with enthusiasm;
and I believe, that the impression, which this history made
upon my mind, continued for many years to have an in-
fluence upon my conduct. ,
My only playfellow in my early childhood was my young-
est sister Margaret; my elder sister was four years older
than I was. The early attachment which was formed be-
tween my sister Margaret (now Mrs. John Ruxton) and
me, has been one of the most constant sources of pleasure
that I have ever possessed. There was and is a great re-
semblance in our tempers, and characters, and tastes. I
know how highly I praise myself in saying this, but it must
be true, or we could not through so many different scenes
of life have preserved as perfect a friendship and affection
for each other, as ever existed between brother and sister.
We were constant playfellows, and such constant friends,
that for much more than half a century the most violent,
indeed I may say the only quarrel, that we ever had, was
upon the following important occasion.
The gardener gave us some playthings, made of rushes;
the good-natured old man presented them to us with much
complacency, and divided them with impartiality. A grid-
iron he gave to little Miss; to little Master, a grenadier’s
cap. Little Miss, however, was not pleased with the dis-
tribution; she insisted upon having the grenadier’s cap,
which, after some reluctance on Master’s part, she ob-
tained: but, after having strutted her little hour under this
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. 1075
heroic accoutrement, she became covetous of the more use-
ful implement, with which she had seen me amusing my-
self. I had fried the gold fish that were caught in the
lake of the pond of the Black Islands; and I had gone
through a considerable part of the story of the prince half
marble and half man, as I had lately read it in the Arabian
Nights, Entertainments. I was in the character of the
Black Genius, exclaiming, “Fish! fish! do your duty ”—
when my sister insisted that she ought to be the cook. I
told her there were men cooks, but not female grenadiers.
We disputed; we grew angry; we proceeded to violence; a
battle ensued, in which the grenadier’s cap was beaten to
pieces. Loud were the lamentations. My mother heard
the disturbance; and, instead of what is commonly called
scolding us, took pains to do justice between us, and
brought us to reason and peace, by mildly pointing out the
folly of our quarrel. It is often from disputes like these,
that children learn the consequences of passion, and the
danger of giving way to it; and it is by the impartial and
judicious conduct of parents, on such seemingly trival oc-
casions, that they may begin to form the temper to habits
of self-command.
Of this sister of mine I may say, that she has an uncom-
monly good temper, and she is as little inclined to violence
as any of the gentlest of her sex. My mother took various
means early to give me honorable feelings and good prin-
ciples; and by these she endeavored to correct, and to teach
me to govern, the violence of my natural temper. She was
lame, and not able to subdue me by force: if I ran away
from her when she was going to punish me, she could not
follow and catch me; but she obtained such power over my
mind, that she induced me to come to her to be punished
whenever she required it. I resigned myself, and without
a struggle submitted to the chastisement she thought prop-
er to inflict. The consequence of this submission was my
acquiring, if I may say so, the esteem as well as the
affection of my mother. But she was not blind to my
faults: she saw the danger of my passionate temper. It
was a difficult task to correct it; though perfectly submis-
sive to her, I was with others rebellious and outrageous in
my anger. My mother heard continual complaints of me;
yet she wisely forebore to lecture or punish me for every
1076 IRISH LITERATURE.
trifling misdemeanor ; she seized proper occasions to make
a strong impression upon my mind.
One day, my elder brother Tom, who, as I have said, was
almost a man when I was a little child, came into the nur-
sery where I was playing, and where the maids were iron-
ing. Upon some slight provocation or contradiction from
him, I flew into a violent passion; and, snatching up one
of the box-irons, which the maid had just laid down, I flung
it across the table at my brother. He stooped instantly;
and, thank God! it missed him. There was a red-hot
heater in it, of which I knew nothing until I saw it thrown
out, and till I heard the scream from the maids. They
seized me, and dragged me downstairs to my mother.
Knowing that she was extremely fond of my brother, and
that she was of a warm indignant temper, they expected
that signal vengeance would burst upon me. They all spoke
at once. When my mother heard what I had done, I saw
she was struck with horror, but she said not one word in
anger to me. She ordered everybody out of the room ex-
cept myself, and then drawing me near her, she spoke to
me in a mild voice, but in a most serious manner. First, she
explained to me the nature of the crime, which I had run
the hazard of committing; she told me, she was sure that
I had no intention seriously to hurt my brother, and did
not know, that if the iron had hit my brother, it must
have killed him. While I felt this first shock, and whilst
the horror of murder was upon me, my mother seized the
moment, to conjure me to try in future to command my
passions.
I remember her telling me, that I had an uncle by the
mother’s side who had such a violent temper, that in a fit
of passion one of his eyes actually started out of its
socket. “You,” said my mother to me, “have naturally a
violent temper: if you grow up to be a man without learn-
ing to govern it, it will be impossible for you then to com-
mand yourself; and there is no knowing what crime you
may in a fit of passion commit, and how miserable you may
in consequence of it become. You are but a very young
child, yet I think you can understand me. Instead of
speaking to you as I do at this moment, I might punish you
severely; but I think it better to treat you like a reasonable
creature. My wish is to teach you to command your tem-
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. 1077
per; nobody can do that for you, so well as you can do it
for yourself.”
As nearly as I can recollect, these were my mother’s
words; I am certain this was the sense of what she then
said tome. The impression made by the earnest solemnity
with which she spoke never, during the whole course of
my life, was effaced from my mind. From that moment I
determined to govern my temper. The determinations
and the good resolutions of a boy of between five and six
years old are not much to be depended upon, and I do not
mean to boast that mine were thenceforward uniformly
kept; but I am conscious that my mother’s warning fre-
quently recurred to me, when I felt the passion of anger ris-
ing within me; and that both whilst I was a child, and after
I became a man, these her words of early advice had most
powerful and salutary influence in restraining my temper.
Of the further rudiments of my education I recollect
only that I was taught arithmetic, and made expert in
counting at the card table, when my father and mother
used to play cribbage. The attention to teach me numbers
was bestowed particularly, because my father, not being
infected with that foolish pride, which renders parents
averse to the idea of putting a son into business or com-
merce, destined me for a merchant. . . .
My mother inspired me with a love of truth, a dislike of
low company, and an admiration of whatever was generous.
Fortunately for me, the few visitors who frequented our
house seemed to join with her in a wish to instil generous
sentiments. One lady in particular, who, as I observed,
was treated by my mother with much respect, made a salu-
tary impression upon me. She gave me Gay’s Fables with
prints, with which I was much delighted; and desired me
to get by heart the fable of the Lion and the Cub. She
explained to me the design of this fable, which was within
the compass of my understanding. It gave me early the
notion, that I ought to dislike low company, and to despise
the applause of the vulgar. Some traits in the history of
Cyrus, which was read to me, seized my imagination, and,
next to Joseph in the Old Testament, Cyrus became the
favorite of my childhood. My sister and I used to amuse
ourselves with playing Cyrus at the court of his grand-
father Astyages. At the great Persian feasts I was, like
1078 IRISH LITERATURE.
young Cyrus, to set an example of temperance, to eat noth-
ing but water-cresses, to drink nothing but water, and to
reprove the cup-bearer for making the king my grandfather
drunk. To this day I remember the taste of those water-
cresses; and for those who love to trace the characters of
men in the sports of children I may mention, that my
character for sobriety, if not for water drinking, has con-
tinued through life.
At seven years old, I became very devout. I had heard
some of the New Testament, and some account of the suffer-
ings of martyrs; these inflamed my imagination so much,
that I remember weeping bitterly before I was eight years
old, because I lived at a time when I had no opportunity
of being a martyr. I however dared to think for myself.
—My father was about this time enclosing a garden; part
of the wall in its progress afforded means of climbing to
the top of it, which I soon effected. My father repri-
manded me severely, and as no fruit was at that time ripe,
he could not readily conceive what motive I could have
for taking so much trouble, and running so great a risk. I
told him truly, that I had no motive but the pleasure of
climbing. I added, that if the garden were full of ripe
peaches, it would be a much greater temptation; and that
unless he should be certain that nobody would climb over
the wall, he ought not to have peaches in the garden.
After having talked to me for some time, he discovered that
I had reasoned thus: if my father knows beforehand, that
the temptation of peaches will necessarily induce me to
climb over the garden wall; and that if I do, it is more
than probable that I shall break my neck, I shall not be
guilty of any crime, but my father will be the cause of my
breaking my neck. This I applied to Adam, without at
the time being able to perceive the great difference between
things human and divine. My father, feeling that he was
not prepared to give me a satisfactory answer to this dif-
ficulty, judiciously declined the contest, and desired me
not to meddle with what was above my comprehension. I
mention this, because all parents, who encourage their
children to speak freely, often hear from them puzzling
questions and observations, and I wish to point out, that
on such occasions children should not be discouraged, but
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. 1079
on the contrary, according to the advice of Rousseau, par-
ents should fairly and truly confess their ignorance.
So strong were my religious feelings at this time of my
life, that I strenuously believed, that if I had sufficient
faith, I could remove mountains; and accordingly I prayed
for the objects of my childish wishes with the utmost fer-
vency, and with the strongest persuasion that my prayers
would be heard. How long the fervor of this sort of devo-
tion lasted I do not remember; but I suppose that going to
school insensibly allayed it.
MAURICE F. EGAN.
(1882 —)
MAURIOCE Francis Kaan, professor of English language and litera-
ture at the Catholic University of Washington, was born in 1833
and was educated at La Salle College and Georgetown, D.C. He
was successively sub-editor of McGee's Illustrated Weekly and The
Catholic Review, and editor of Freeman's Journal; afterward he
became professor of English literature in the University of Notre
Dame, Indiana, and was also one of the editors of the ‘ World’s Beat
Literature.’
He has written the following books : ‘That Girl of Mine,’ ‘ That
Lover of Mine,’ ‘A Garden of ,’ ‘Stories of Duty,’ ‘ The Life
Around Us,’ ‘ The Theater and Christian Parents,’ ‘ Modern Novelists,’
“ Lectures on English Literature,’ ‘A Gentleman,’ ‘ Jack Chumleigh,’
“Jack Chumleigh at Boarding School,’ ‘A Primer of English Litera-
ture,’ ‘The Disappearance of John Longworthy,’ ‘A Marrii
Reason,’ ‘The Success of Patrick Desmond,’ ‘The Flower of the
Flock,’ ‘ Preludes’ (poems), ‘Songs and Sonnets and other Poems,’
‘The Vocation of Edward Conway,’ ‘The Chatelaine of the Roses,’
‘Jasper Thorne,’ ‘In a Brazilian Forest,’ ‘The Leopard of Lanci-
anus,’ ‘Studies in Literature,’ ‘The Watson Girls.’
THE ORANGE LILIES.
From ‘ From the Land of St. Lawrence.’
When Neil Durnan’s wife died, there was no lonelier
man in the County Meath. His farm was in good condi-
tion. He was not, in the estimation of elderly men, old;
he was healthy, and he had seen triumphant Orangemen
defeated in his lifetime, over and over again. He was a
very “warm” farmer. His elder son was a Franciscan
friar over in Italy; his younger had gone to America. The
first was out of his world; he had never quite forgiven
Friar Francis, who, after the education he had, might have
been a decent parish priest at home, for joining “ the
beggars,” as he called the members of the great Order.
The younger son, Maurice, was in America,—in a place
called Wisconsin. Father and son had never got on well
together. They both had strong opinions; so one day, with
a hundred pounds to his credit, Maurice went over the sea,
and the father’s heart had ached ever since, though he had
not shown this in word or deed.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, LLD.
Professor of English Literature at the Catholic University of Washington ;
Associate Epttor ov Irish Liveratune.
From a photograph by Bachrach & Bro., Washiogton, D. C.
MAURICE F. EGAN. 1081
It was this heartache that made him look seaward. His
old neighbors were gone. To the farm on his left had come
a Belfast man who kept hunters, whose wife and daughters
went about “ dropping pieces of pasteboard at their neigh-
bors.”
“Tt’s on wheels they come,” he said, “and them calling
themselves decent women, and then drop a handful of
pasteboards with their names on them. And there are
afternoon tays and feet champeeters and few de joys going
on all the time, and him an Orange squireen of a fellow,
with his garden full of yellow lilies, just to spite the likes
of me on the twelfth of July.”
His neighbor on the right was not the less obnoxious;
he had acquired poor Pat Dolan’s farm, and was making it
pay by means of all sort of new-fangled machinery.
“Taking the bread out of poor men’s mouths,” the ag-
grieved Mr. Durnan said; “sure, what right has he to do
that? Pat Dolan would have cut off his finger before he
turned a man from his day’s work,—and he turned out of
the farm his grandfather had before him, just because he
was too kind and generous to his own people.”
The sight of the squireen’s women folk, on wheels, with
cardcases in their hands, was an evil thing, the farm
machinery was worse, but the front garden with its orange
lilies worst of all.
“And when I remarked to that woman,” says I, “the
orange lilies, saving your presence, ma’am, are symbolical
of the devil himself and of all Orange haythen, —what
did she say in a high English voice, but ‘Oh, Mr. Durnan,
you "re so old-fashioned! We must forget old feuds.’ And
the likes of her keeping them up with their orange lilies!”
If it had not been for the enormous mastiff that guarded
the Squire’s house at night, he would have made short work
of the masses of bloom that glowed in a hundred tints
of yellow, like coiled, jeweled snakes, in the center of his
neighbor’s lawn. As it was, he was helpless; the splendid
flowers were a menace, a threat, a hated blot on the land-
scape. Finally he could endure them no more; he made a
good bargain in the sale of his farm, and then a struggle
began within him. Should he go to his son?—to this in-
dependent son of his, who had gone off with the portion his
mother had a right to give him, refusing aught else; who
1082 IRISH LITERATURE.
had married a “ Yankee; ” who—and this made Neil Dur-
nan feel very bitter—had never asked for anything, and
who—and this made the bitterness more bitter—might be
better off in this world’s goods than he was?
If Maurice had come to him, poor, suppliant, he would
have clasped him in his arms, and killed the fatted calf,
and sent out for all the purple and fine linen to be brought.
If he should find Maurice with his three little children,
suffering, poor, in need of help, his heart and his hand
would go out to them with all the force of a strong nature.
But the thought that Maurice might be “ warmer ” than he,
rejoicing perhaps in all those new machines which he so
much detested, filled him with anger. Rumors had come
to him of the prosperity of Maurice in that far-off Wiscon-
sin; he had pretended to doubt them; he had smiled when
hints of this prosperity had appeared in the letters the son
wrote to his mother, but he feared they were true.
“ Three sons, and one dead,” he murmured, “ and not one
of them named for me. Sure, he sent word to ask me
once as to the naming of his first one, but I said, ‘ No,—
?t was unbefitting that a child of his Yankee wife should
be named for me.’ I did not mean it, but I suppose they
thought I did.”
Love, which was warm at the core of the old man’s
heart, conquered at last, and on Sunday before he started
for Queenstown, he achieved a victory over himself. It
was the day on which the Blue Ribbon Society went to
Communion. He had a grudge against one member, whose
father had been a Scotchman, and whose mother was a
County Meath woman; the son called himself Scotch-Irish.
He had always avoided walking in the procession next to
this man, though once or twice he had been paired with
him. But on this morning he took his place beside him.
It was hard; hut he did not wince.
“I've done that,” he said, when it was over, “and now
I can stand anything!”
Over the ocean, through New York and Chicago, Neil
Durnan sped. He cared neither for the Brooklyn Bridge,
nor Niagara Falls, nor the great buildings in the western
metropolis; he was intent on his son,—full of love, full of
envy, jealous as any father could be, and hoping tnat a
cyclone or some horror might have made this proud son of
MAURICE F. EGAN. 1083
his dependent on him. Of what use was the goodly sum
to his credit in the bank, if Maurice had a greater sum?
He found Maurice grave, cordial, quiet; a man of con-
sequence, and of sound judgment; he was large, handsome,
red-haired,—of the type of his mother. The old man’s
worst fears were fulfilled: the Wisconsin farm of over
five hundred acres was in perfect condition. And, in this
month of July, all modern appliances were in use to de-
velop its richness.
Neil Durnan had to go to his comfortable room, to groan
and almost to weep. The spectacle of his proud son’s
success, in which he had no hand, was like a dagger to his
heart. His three grandsons were called Lewis, John, and
Maurice,—not one Neil among them. His son’s wife was
very sweet in her manner to him, “too much of a lady,
entirely,” he said. There was no denying that his grand-
sons were fine, affectionate little boys, well instructed in
their religion. The smallest of the three was gentle, and
somewhat delicate,—“ like the one that died,” his mother
said, softly. Neil found great consolation in this boy.
He told him of the leprechauns, and of all the wonderful
things that happened over in Ireland, in the old days.
Still his heart was bitter; he would not pray; his beads
hung against the wall, untouched. His son had dared to
make for himself a world of his own,—and he was outside
of it.
He had promised to meet his little grandson at a stream
near the graveyard; the church, red brick, with a Gothic
tower, was at the edge of his son’s farm. In this stream
grandfather and grandson fished with the gaudy flies
brought from Ireland. During the long, sultry afternoons,
this spot, covered by great spruce trees, was cool, and
though not even a minnow bit at the elaborate flies, the two
were happy. On this afternoon the little boy came, flushed
and bright-eyed, carrying a bunch of orange lilies.
“For you, grandpapa!” he called out.
Neil Durnan stood like a bull at the sight of red. Then
he tore the obnoxious flowers from the child’s hand, threw
them upon the ground, and trampled upon them. The boy
opened his blue eyes, horrified, amazed, by the angry face
and brutal gestures of his grandfather.
1084 IRISH LITERATURE.
“O grandpapa!” he cried, “how can you! They were
for you; I gathered them at—”
But Neil Durnan had gone off, muttering. Everywhere
he was to endure insults, and from his own kin!
“My son did this,” he said, bitterly, “or his Yankee
wife!”
He strode into the graveyard, not knowing where he
was. He would leave this place; he would go at once, he
resolved. And when he resolved to act in any matter, it
was hard to move him. He would not say good-bye; a cold
hand seemed to clutch at his heart as he thought of the
tear-filled eyes of the little Maurice; but he would go,—
and at once.
There was a trailing mock-orange vine in his path, and
as he made his next step, a tendril-coil of it caught his
foot; he went down, and lay for a moment prone, in a bed
of the splendid yellow-and-red flowers his heart detested.
He tore them away from him, and saw that they clustered
about a small stone cross; he read
New Dognan:
AGED TWELVE: 1896.
MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
“Neil Durnan!” His proud son had indeed named the
dead little boy for him. He forgot the yellow splendor
about him, and read the name again; tears ran down his
wind-reddened cheeks. He knelt for a moment; then he
plucked a handful of the flowers that grew on this sacred
grave, those hated flowers that dotted in a dozen places the
green of the graveyard. He clasped the long leaves almost
tenderly, and went back to the place where his little grand-
son had begun to fish, in a sober and subdued way, with the
gorgeous flies.
“Here, Maurice,” he said, “ are some of the flowers you
brought me just now. I know where you got them. Tell
me about your little brother—Neil.” The old man’s voice
choked.
Maurice smiled brightly, and began to talk of the dear,
little brother who had died almost a year ago. And so
MAURICE F. EGAN. 1085
they sat there, lovingly, the whole twelfth of July after-
noon, with the orange lilies between them, symbols, not of
war, but of victory.
THE SHAMROCK.
When April rains make flowers bloom
And Johnny-jump-ups come to light,
And clouds of color and perfume
Float from the orchards pink and white,
I see my shamrock in the rain,
An emerald spray with raindrops set,
Like jewels on Spring’s coronet,
So fair, and yet it breathes of pain.
The shamrock on an older shore
Sprang from a rich and sacred soil
Where saint and hero lived of yore,
And where their sons in sorrow toil;
And here, transplanted, it to me
Seems weeping for the soil it left,
The diamonds that all others see
Are tears drawn from its heart bereft.
When April rain makes flowers grow,
And sparkles on their tiny buds
That in June nights will overflow
And fill the world with scented floods,
The lonely shamrock in our land—
So fine among the clover leaves—
For the old springtime often grieves—
I feel its tears upon my hand.
ROBERT EMMET.
(1778—1808.)
Ropert EMMET was born in Cork March 4, 1778. He was
originally intended for the bar and entered Trinity College, but in
1798 he had joined the Society of United Irishmen and in a bh
at the Debating Society of the college said : “ When a people ad-
vancing rapidly in knowledge and power perceive at last how far
their government is lagging behind them, what then, I ask, is to be
done in such a case? What but to pull the government up to the
people?” The result was that Emmet was expelled.
Pee then went to live with his brother at Fort George, and after-
ward traveled through Spain, Holland, and Switzerland, and
visited Paris, where he became the confidant of the Jacobins and
the center of a select circle of exiles who were both Irish patriots
and French republicans.
Buoyed up with promises of assistance from France, Emmet once
more returned to Ireland and did all in his power to organize an in-
surrection. is patviotiom was measured not only by words but b:
deeds. The deat of his father had put him in possession of stoc!
to the amount of £1,500 ($7,500). This he converted into cash, and,
taking a house in Patrick Street, Dublin, he had pikes, rockets,
and hand-grenades made and stored there in great quantities. An
explosion occurred which destroyed a portion of the house, killing
one man and injuring others; but Emmet, instead of being dis-
coura; by this disaster, only redoubled his care and resided
entirely on the premises. At this time he wrote: “I have little
time to look at the thousand difficulties which stand between me
and the completion of my wishes. That these difficulties will dis-
appear I have an ardent and, I trust, rational hope. But if it is not
to bethe case, I thank God for having gifted me with a sanguine
disposition, To that disposition I run from reflection : and if my
hopes are without foundation—if a precipice is opened under my
feet, from which duty will not suffer me to run back—I am grate-
ful for that sanguine disposition which leads me to the brink and
throws me down, while my eyes are still raised to those visions of
happiness which my fancy has formed in the air.”
On July 23, 1803, the day appointed for the rising, not more than
a hundred insurgents assembled, and they were at once joined by
a noisy rabble, who, in passing through the streets to attack the
Castle, shot dead one Colonel Brown and rushed upon a carriage
containing Lord Kilwarden, the Lord Chief-Justice of Ireland, is
daughter, and the Rev. Mr. Wolfe. Lord Kilwarden and Mr. Wolfe
were savagely murdered, but Emmet, on hearing of the outrage,
rushed from the head of his party and bore the lady to an adjoining
house for safety. The leaders now lost all control over the mob,
and in utter disgust Emmet and his companions left them and fleá
to the Wicklow Hills.
1086
‘ROBERT EMMET. 1087
His friends did their best to did in his escape, and all preparations
were made, but he refused to quit Ireland without first seeing and
bidding farewell to Miss Sarah Curran, daughter of John Philpot
Curran, to whom he was betrothed. The delay was fatal, and he
was arrested. Only the pathetic lines of Moore can depict the feel-
ings of Miss Curran on this event:—' '
“Ob! what was love made for, if 'tis not the same
Thro’ joy and thro’ torments, thro’ glory and shame?
Iknow not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
I but know that I love thee whatever thou art!
“Thou hast called me thy angel in moments of bliss,
Still phy angel I'll be ‘mid the horrors of this,—
Thro’ the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee, or perish there too.”
While in prison, Emmet tried to induce his jailer by a gift of
money to deliver a letter to Mies Curran, but the official gave it to
the Attorney-General instead, On hearing of this, he offered to
the authorities to plead guilty and speak no word of defense if they
would permit his letter to reach its intended destination, but the
offer was refused. He was brought to trial in September for high
treason and sentenced to be executed, a sentence which was im-
mediately carried out.
Thomas Moore, who was the intimate friend of Emmet at college,
says of him in his ‘ Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald’: ‘‘ Were I to
number the men among all I have ever known who appeared to me
to combine in the greatest degree pure moral worth with intellectual
power, I should among the highest of the few place Robert Emmet.”
LAST SPEECH OF ROBERT EMMET.
My Lords,—I am asked what have I to say why sentence
of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law.
Ihave nothing to say that can alter your predetermination,
nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the
mitigation of that sentence which you are to pronounce,
and I must abide by. But I have that to say which inter-
ests me more than life, and which you have labored to
destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should
be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny
which has been cast upon it. I do not imagine that, seated
where you are, your mind can be so free from prejudice as
to receive the least impression from what I am going to
utter. I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in
jhe breast of a court constituted and trammeled as this
1088 IRISH LITERATURE.
I only wish, and that is the utmost that I expect, that
your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories
untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds
some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storms
by which it is buffeted. Was I only to suffer death, after
being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in
silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a mur-
mur; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body
to the executioner will, through the ministry of the law,
labor in its own vindication to consign my character to
obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere, whether in
the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe time must
determine. A man in my situation has not only to en-
counter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power
over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the
difficulties of established prejudice. The man dies, but his
memory lives. That mine may not perish, that it may
live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this op-
portunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges
alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to
a more friendly port—when my shade shall have joined
the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their
blood on the scaffold and in the field in the defense of their
country and of virtue, this is my hope—I wish that my
memory and name may animate those who survive me,
while I look down with complacency on the destruction of
that perfidious government which upholds its domination
by blasphemy of the Most High—which displays its power
over man, as over the beasts of the forest—which sets man
upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God,
against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a
little more or a little less than the government standard—
a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries
of the orphans and the tears of the widows it has made.
[Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Emmet, saying—
“that the mean and wicked enthusiasts who felt as he did,
were not equal to the accomplishment of their wild de
signs.”]
I appeal to the immaculate God—I swear by the Throne
of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear—by the
blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me
—that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and
ROBERT EMMET. 1089
through all my purposes, governed only by the conviction
which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the
emancipation of my country from the superinhuman op-
pression under which she has so long and too patiently
travailed; and I confidently hope that, wild and chimerical
as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ire-
land to accomplish this noblest of enterprises. Of this I
speak with confidence, of intimate knowledge, and with the
consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not,
my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you
a transitory uneasiness. A man who never yet raised his
voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his character with pos-
terity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to
his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords,
a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until
his country is liberated, will not leave a weapon in the
power of envy, or a pretense to impeach the probity which
he means to preserve, even in the grave to which tyranny
consigns him.
[Here he was interrupted. Lord Norbury said he did
not sit there to hear treason.]
I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge,
when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sen-
tence of the law. I have also understood that judges some-
times think it their duty to hear with patience and to
speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and
to offer, with tender benignity, their opinions of the motives
by which he was actuated in the crime of which he was
adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty
80 to have done, I have no doubt; but where is the boasted
freedom of your institutions—where is the vaunted im-
partiality, clemency, and mildness of your courts of justice,
if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not
justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the execu-
tioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and
truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was
actuated? My lords, it may be a part of the system of
angry justice to bow a man’s mind by humiliation to the
purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than
the purposed shame, or the scaffold’s terrors, would be the
shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have
been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a
1090 IRISH LITERATURE.
judge; I am the supposed culprit. I am a man; you area
man also. By a revolution of power we might change
places, though we never could change characters. If I
stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my
character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this
bar and dare not vindicate my charaeter, how dare you
calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your
unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, condemn my tongue
to silence and my reputation to reproach? Your execu-
tioner may abridge the period of my existence; but while
I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and
motives from your aspersions; and, as a man to whom fame
is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in
doing justice fo that reputation which is to live after me,
and which is the only legacy I can leave to those E honor
and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. ' As men, my
lords, we must appear on the great day at one common tri-
bunal; and it will then remain for the Searcher of all
hearts to show a collective universe who was engaged in the’
most virtuous actions or swayed by the purest motives. ...
I am charged with being an emissary of France. An
emissary of France! and for what end? It is alleged that I
wished to sell the independence of my country; and for
what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And is
this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles con-
tradiction? No; I am no emissary; and my ambition was
to hold a place among the deliverers of my country, not
in power nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement.
Sell my country’s independence to France! and for what?
Was it a change of masters? No, but for my ambition. Oh,
my country, was it personal ambition that could influence
me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by
my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration
of my family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of
your oppressors? My Country was my idol. To it I sac
rificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it
I now offer up myself, O God! No, my lords; I acted as an
Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the
yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and the more
galling yoke of a domestic faction, which is its joint partner
and perpetrator in the patricide,—from the ignominy ex-
isting with an exterior of splendor and a conscious de
~ ROBHRT EMMET. 1091
‘pravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my
country from this doubly riveted despotism—I wished to
place her independence beyond the reach of any power on
earth. I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the
world. Connection with France was indeed intended, but
only as far as mutual interest would sanction or require.
Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent
with the purest independence, it would be a signal for
their destruction. We sought their aid—and we sought it
as we had assurance we should obtain it—as auxiliaries in
war and allies in peace. Were the French to come as in-
vaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I
should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes!
my countrymen, I should advise you to meet them upon the
beach with.a sword in.one hand and a torch in the other.
I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war.
I would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their
boats, before they had contaminated. the soil of my coun-
try. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire
before superior discipline,.I would dispute every. inch of
ground, burn every blade of grass, and the last entrench-
ment of liberty should be my grave. . What I could not do
myself, if I.should fall, I should leave.as a last charge to
my countrymen to accomplish; because I should feel con-
scious that life, any more than death, is unprofitable when
a foreign nation holds my country in subjection. But it
was not as an enemy that the succors of France were to
land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France; but
I wished to prove to France and to the world that Irishmen
deserved to be assisted—that they were indignant at slav-
ery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of
their country; I wished to procure for my country the
guarantee which Washington procured for America—to
procure an aid which, by its example, would be as im-
portant as its.valor; disciplined, gallant, pregnant with
science and experience; that of a people who would perceive
the good and polish the rough points of our character.
They would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends,
after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These
were my objects; not to receive new taskmasters, but to
expel old tyrants. It was for these ends I sought aid from
France; because France, even as an enemy, could not be
1092 IRISH LITERATURE.
more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of
my country.
I have been charged with that importance in the emanci-
pation of my country as to be considered the keystone of
the combination of Irishmen; or, as your lordship ex-
pressed it, “the life and blood of the conspiracy.” You
do me honor overmuch; you have given to the subaltern all
the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this
conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to
your own conceptions of yourself, my lord—men before the
splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with
respectful deference, and who would think themselves dis-
graced by shaking your blood-stained hand.
What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the
scaffold, which that tyranny (of which you are only the
intermediary executioner) has erected for my murder, that
I am accountable for all the blood that has and will be
shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor
—shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as
not to repel it? I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent
Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life; and am I
to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality
here? By you, too, although if it were possible to collect
all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhal-
lowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship might
swim in it.
Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with
dishonor ; let no man attaint my memory, by believing that
I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country’s
liberty and independence; or that I could have become the
pliant minion of power, in the oppression and misery of
my country. The proclamation of the provisional govern-
ment speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured
from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home,
or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I
would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the
same reason that I would resist the domestic oppressor.
In the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the
threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only
by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived
but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the
dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor and the
varies Google
ROBERT EMMET
From an old engraving
ROBERT EMMET. 1093
bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their
rights and my country her independence, am I to be loaded
with calumny, and not suffered to resent it? No; God
forbid!
[Here Lord Norbury told Mr. Emmet that his sentiments
and language disgraced his family and his education, but
more particularly his father, Dr. Emmet, who was a man,
if alive, that would not countenance such opinions. To
which Mr. Emmet replied :—]
If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the
concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this
transitory life, oh! ever dear and venerated shade of my
departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct
of your suffering son, and see if I have even for a moment
deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism
which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and
for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, you
are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek
is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround
your victim—it circulates warmly and unruffied through
the channels which God created for noble purposes, but
which you are now bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous
that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a
few more words to say—I am going to my cold and silent
grave—my lamp of life is nearly extinguished—my race is
run—the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its
bosom. I have but one request to make at my departure
from this world, it is—the charity of its silence. Let no
man write my epitaph; for as no man, who knows my mo-
tives, dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ig-
norance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and
peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb
remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can
do justice to my character. When my country takes her
place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till
then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.
1094 IRISH LITERATURE.
LINES BY ROBERT EMMET.
WRITTEN ON ARBOR HILL BURYING-GROUND, DUBLIN, WHERE THE
BODIES OF INSURGENTS SHOT IN 1798 WERE INTERED.
No rising column marks this spot,
Where many a victim lies;
But oh! the blood which here has streamed,
To Heaven for justice cries.
It claime it on the oppressor’s head,
Who joys in human woe,
Who drinks the tears by misery shed,
And mocks them ae they flow.
It claims it on the callous judge,
‘Whose hands in blood are dyed;
Who arms injustice with the sword,
The balance throws aside.
It claims it for this ruined isle,
Her wretched children’s grave;
Where withered Freedom droops her er head,
And man exists—a slave,
O sacred Justice! free this land
From tyranny abhorred;
Resume thy balance and thy seat—
Resume—but sheathe thy sword.
No retribution should we seek—
Too long has horror reigned ;
By merey marked may freedom rise,
By cruelty unstained.
Nor shall a tyrant’s ashes mix
With those our martyred dead;
This is the place where Erin’s sons
In Erin’s cause have bled.
And those who here are laid at rest,
Oh! hallowed be each name;
Their memories are forever blest—
Consigned to endless fame.
ROBERT EMMET. 1095
Unconsecrated is this ground,
Unblest by holy hands;
No bell here tolls its solemn sound,
No monument here stands.
But here the patriot’s tears are shed,
The poor man’s blessing given;
These consecrate the virtuous dead,
These waft their fame to heaven.
MRS. ESLER.
‘Mrs. E. Rentout EsLer was born in County Donegal. She is a
daughter of the Rev. Dr. A. Rentoul. She was educated privately
and in France and Germany. In 1888 she married Dr. Robert Esler
of London and Ballymenor. She has published ‘The Way of Trans-
greesora,’‘ The Way They Loved at Grimpat,’ ‘ A Maid of the Manse,’
“Mid Green Pastures,’ ‘The Wardlaws,’‘ Youth at the Prow,’ and
‘The Awakening of Helena Thorpe.’ Her studies of North Ireland
life, of that Presbyterian portion of it which is as different as
possible from the Catholic, are vivid and true.
THE CRIMINALITY OF LETTY MOORE.
Mary Willett had decided to emigrate. As this is not
her story, it is unnecessary at this juncture to explain why.
It was an October afternoon, but chilly; the frost had
come too soon, and the leaves were too russet and too brown
for the time of year, and the breath of the north wind was
cold.
Mary stood by the window of Letty Moore’s kitchen,
looking out. One takes a careless attitude sometimes when
not quite at ease with the topic under discussion. Letty
sat facing the light, which fell fully on her small-featured,
large-eyed face, and showed the anxiety there.
“T wouldn’t go, if I were you,” Letty said.
“If you were me you just would,” Mary answered with
a short laugh.
“ You are so young,” Letty went on wistfully.
“That is a fault one outgrows with time.”
“ And you are so pretty.”
“That should help me.”
“ I don’t know that it does, always, when a girl has her
way to make.”
“Tt is decided that I am going, anyway, so there is no
use in seeing the worst side of things now.”
Letty began to cry. “Dees John approve?” she asked.
John was Mary’s brother.
“Of course he does; but for him I couldn't go—he will
find the money; he says it is only fair, since I am set on it.”
Letty wiped away her fast-falling tears. “I wish—I
wish—” she said miserably.
“Tt there was any good in wishing,” Mary interrupted
MRS. ESLER. 1097
in a hard tone, “I should wish that home was a happier
place for us young ones, and that John might marry you.”
“That has been nothing but your fancy ever,” Letty said
firmly, and for the moment the bright flush of color in her
face made her almost as pretty as her friend. “Because
you like me you think he does, it’s nothing but that.”
“ I don’t know that he ’ll ever tell you of it,” Mary went
on, “ having so little to offer you as things are, but he has
always been fond of you.”
A current of thought ran, like slow and harmless flame,
through Letty’s mind; she had not a fortune, it was true,
but she had her industry—that meant money, and a home
of her own, in case John thought the paternal home was too
full already. But girls do not enunciate thoughts of this
kind, even to their closest intimates. Letty seemed to
think in lightning flashes, but when she spoke her words
were measured, and quite irrelevant to the subject of her
thoughts.
“ When do you mean to go? ” she asked.
“Next week, if I am living.”
“Oh, dear,” Letty said with a bursting sigh, “and the
weather growing colder every day, and—everything!”
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
“I” give you my fur cloak,” said Letty, hurriedly.
“It? not need much altering to fit you, and it’s that
warm it ’ll keep the life in you, and I’ll make you a hood
for the journey, a lined one, to fit close round your face.”
Mary threw her arms about her friend’s neck, and burst
into tears, all her wounded pride, her resentment, perhaps
her dread of the enterprise before her, finding utterance
thus.
Letty Moore was a professional; that is to say, she had
been trained to dressmaking, and lived by it exclusively, in
which respect she differed from several others at Grimpat,
who worked at the business fitfully, and had some income
apart from it. But there was not a fortune in the industry
even to a professional. No Grimpat woman ever thought
of more than one new dress in the year, and, where that
was a good one, such as a silk, why, it did for several sub-
sequent years, of course. But this involved few changes
of fashion, and on the whole was for the peace of mind of
dressmakers.
1098 IRISH LITERATURE.
There were times when Letty wished that she was not
the best dressmaker, which goes to prove that she was a
little more of a woman and a little less of an artist than
might have been believed, and that was when accident
brought her now and then a sudden rush of work and re-
sponsibility. It was on the very evening of Mary’s visit
to her that old Mr. Tedford died, and as he was very well-
to-do, and of the highest respectability, it seemed as if the
whole neighborhood claimed kindred with him and went
into mourning. Letty stitched and stitched, and fitted,
and altered, and sent home parcels all day. long, so that
the eve of her friend’s departure had arrived before she
found time to make in her fur cloak the few alterations she
had spoken of. Looe
When these were completed she. locked up her house
and took the carrier’s cart to Nutford. She was bound to
supply the hood she had promised, and there was no snita-
ble material to be procured nearer home. Owing to work
and preoccupation, Letty had forgotten that the day was
a Thursday, and that the Nutford shops closed early on
Thursdays. When she found the windows all. shuttered
and the doors all barricaded, Letty’s natural conclusion
was that Nutford was also in mourning for Mr. Tedford.
But after a moment the reasonable explanation occurred
to her, and she sped from house to house and from street
to sireet—in vain; such shops as remained open offered
nothing better than could be found at Grimpat. .
Letty went home in a kind of despair. She had prom-
ised that hood, and Mary was depending on it, and to pre-
sent herself before Mary in the morning without it was a
prospect she had not the moral courage to face. Arrived
at her own house, she opened every trunk, and drawer, and
receptacle. She studied the possibilities of every remnant,
but there was nothing that would be of the slightest ser-
vice. Scarlet satin, striped yellow and black silk, and
patchwork were equally out of the question. She could
not send her friend out into the world barred like a zebra
or gay as a parrokeet.
“To think of disappointing her, and her so fond of me!”
said Letty, with a sob. She recalled Mary’s quick rush of
rapture at the mention of the hood, her half-whispered
words, “If only everybody was as good as you!” and felt
HRS. ESLER. 1099 -
that to break her promise was too grievoug to think
about.”
“I don’t know how 151 face her, and that’s the truth,”
she said.
The floor was littered with scraps, cuttings, and odds
and ends. She began to sort them mechanically, putting
the larger pieces back whence they had been taken, gather-
ing the smaller bits into a covered basket that she kept for
refuse, opening and shutting the drawers mechanically,
scarcely knowing what she did.
Suddenly she paused, and a kind of tremor stole over
her. In one of the drawers was a piece of silk which she
had been commissioned to keep till the spring. Old Mrs.
Smith had bought it as a present for her niece, and had
intrusted it to the dressmaker pending her niece’s next
visit. Letty withdrew the silk from its wrappings of tissue
paper and laid it on the bed. On the outer cover was the
vendor’s name, “ John Marshall, Nutford.”
“Tf only I had been in time,” said Letty, “I could have
got a bit of that; it’s the very thing.”
She drew forth a fold of the silk and touched it with
caressing fingers. ‘The ground was black, with a pattern
of triangular patches of pink—a quaint, old-fashioned
pattern, the mode of an hour, a pretty but ephemeral thing;
but Letty did not know that. She took her yard-measure
and ran along the length of the piece. “ Nine yards,” she
said. Those were not the days of voluminous sleeves or
bouffant skirts. “Three-quarters of a yard would make
the hood, and I have the lining, and the wadding, and black
strings that would do, and I could match the silk to-
morrow at Marshall’s and put it back. It wouldn’t be a
sin; I don’t think it would bea sin. It is for Mary's sake,
not to disappoint her, and her so fond of me. Oh, dear!
I hope it’s not a sin; I wouldn’t do a sin for anything.”
But she had taken up the scissors, and had cut ‘off the
length of silk required, even while she protested. .
Until late in the night she sewed feverishly. When the
hood was finished, she tried it on herself. “It makes me
just bonnie!” she said with a gay little laugh, and truly
at the moment her eyes were as bright as stars and her
cheeks like roses. Letty did not know that the fever of a
first misdoing was in her veins.
1100 IRISH LITERATURE.
She slept little that night, because she had Mary, and the
hood, and John Willett, and all the others to think about.
The thought that when Mary had gone she would scarcely
hear of John, and certainly never anything intimate con-
cerning him, added a conscious element to her depression.
There was much excitement at the Willetts’ when Letty
arrived there, almost as much as if the occasion had in-
volved a marriage or a funeral. The neighbors had come
to say good-bye; a few of the more intimate would remain
to speed Mary’s departure, the others left their little gifts
and good wishes and went away.
To dispose of gifts at the last moment, when one is start-
ing on a journey to another continent, involves trouble;
Mary was very busy and excited, half-laughing, half-tear-
ful, her sisters disposed to envy her, and to promise that
they would join her as soon as she advised them to do so,
while Mrs. Willett moved about like a large and solemn
Minerva, talking mournfully of wilful children and dan-
gers that awaited those who were ungrateful for a home.
Letty had determined to go with Mary to Nutford; she
wanted her to wear the cloak on her journey to Liverpool,
but she did not want her to wear it at Grimpat, where it
would be recognized. When she had said good-bye to her
friend she would go to Marshall’s and match the silk. She
did not acknowledge this even to herself, but it is possible
that amid her sorrow and her fears she found it not alto-
gether unpleasant to travel half an hour side by side with
Mary’s brother.
The leavetakings were over at last, and Mary, a little
despondent, a little elated, steamed away towards the New
World. Letty watched her out of sight, wiped her tears,
and then took her way briskly towards the draper’s. The
practical trod hard on the heels of the dramatic, as always
happens in this mixed life of ours.
Mr. Marshall could not match the silk; he said it was
useless even to attempt to do so; that the dress was
one of a set purchased in lengths and so retailed, that he
bought the lot at a clearance sale, and had not the faintest
idea where they had been made.
Letty thought she would faint when she received this
information; floating darkness seemed to shut the man’s
unimaginative face away from her, and the breath on her
MES. ESLER. 1101
lips felt cold. Mr. Marshall was frightened—he caught
at her hastily across the counter, and helped her to seat
herself. “ You are not well,” he said.
“Not just too well,” she answered dully. “I have been
working very hard lately, owing to Mr. Tedford’s death,
you know, and then to see Mary Willett go away has been
a kind of trial; she is my oldest friend.”
“The world is full of trouble,” said Mr. Marshall; the
occasion demanded speech, and he could not think of any
more apt or apposite.
Letty said nothing; she leaned her arms on the counter
and contemplated him in pale dismay.
“You don’t know even if that bit of silk was French or
English? ” she asked, after a pause.
“ I don’t know a thing about it but what I have told you.
Is it very important that it should be matched?”
“ The dress length is a bit short for what I want; I can’t
make it the way it was intended, unless I get three-quarters
of a yard more.”
“Then you ’ll have to make it some other way,” the man
answered pleasantly. “What would you say to a bit of
black or a bit of pink for trimming?”
Letty shook her head as she rose. “No, no,” she said,
“it wouldn’t be a bit of good; nothing will be any good
but just the silk itself.”
Mr. Marshall looked after her as she went down the shop.
“She works too hard,” he said, “and she is a nice little
body—getting on, too, when one comes to think of it. She
has been a regular customer of mine for seven or eight
years.” Then Mr. Marshall sighed, though neither he nor
any one else could have told why.
Letty went down the street like one in a dream. The
cold north wind ruffied her hair and fluttered her trim
skirts, and blew coldly into her distended eyes. “I ama
thief,” she was saying to herself, “a thief!” Taking the
silk when she believed she could put it back scarcely seemed
a liberty, much less a crime; now its aspect was altogether
different.
“I wonder what I’m to do!” the girl said to herself.
There were women to whom she would have gone imme-
diately and made confession, and offered anything in com-
pensation for the missing material; but in Mrs. Smith’s
1102 IRISH LITERATURE.
case this was not to be thought of. Mrs. Smith would
simply tell the whole parish that Letty Moore was not
honest, or to be trusted, because she had stolen a piece of
her silk gown. Then the thought of John Willett came
into Letty’s mind, and of how he would receive this tid-
ings. “ What will become of me, any way? ” she said.
“Tl not charge her for anything but the bare making,”
said Letty. “II put in all the lining and bone free, and
give her value that way, and I’ll line the bottom of the
skirt with a bit of silk; if she notices it, 1’ll say ¥ had it
by me, and she is welcome to it.” Then she sighed again;
it struck her already that the path of the wrong-doer is
a tortuous one, and Letty was very fond of plain dealing
and straight ways.
When she reached home, she took out the piece of silk
and looked at it; then she began to cry ina tired way. “To
think of me being a thief; but it’s just what Iam. I sup-
pose it’s this way people begin to rob banks and get sent
to prison. I wonder will she find out? If she doesn’t
I’ll—” she did not know what wild condition ' she
wanted to offer to destiny, she only knew that she
was ready to promise anything provided she escaped
the consequences of this one misdoing. Meantime, Mra.
Smith had also been to Nutford, and had also had an
errand to John Marshall’s, and thus, by one of the evil
chances which overtake certain unfortunates, she sat down
in the very chair poor Letty had vacated, and was wel-
comed by Mr. Marshall with just the same smile and the
same insinuating movement of the hands. Mrs. Smith
laid her reticule on the counter, opened it, took out her
list, and spoke first of bombazine.
While Mr. Marshall waited on her, she picked up ab-
stractedly the strip of silk Letty had left behind, and
wound it absent-mindedly round the finger of her cotton
glove. When her purchases were effected and she was
about to open her purse, the bit of silk caught her atten-
tion for the first time.
“Another bit of my silk, Mr. Marshall,” she said, un-
bending. “Have you got a new consignment of them dress
lengths? I wouldn’t mind a black one for myself, if you
have a black as good a bargain.”
Mr. Marshall shook his head. “It’s a rare chance to
MRS. ESLER. 1103
pt such goods as they were, so cheap. One doesn’t do that
twice in half a dozen years. I could sell them ten times
over if I had more. There was a young lady in to match
one of them a while ago, and she is just distracted that
there is not more to be had. That’s her pattern round
your finger.”
“Mr. Marshall,” said Mrs. Smith impressively, “ you
told me you had just one pink and black, and that you sold
it to me, yet here ’s another pink and black of somebody
else’s!””
“ Whatever I told you at the time was the truth,” said
Mr. Marshall, with dignity. “There is no need to say
what isn’t, to sell my goods.”
“ But here a another pattern of the same,” Mrs. Smith
persisted. “Who brought this pattern?”
“Tt was Miss Moore.”
“Letty Moore the dressmaker! Well, now, to think of
that! Fancied my silk for herself, I suppose, and thought
to match it. But you haven’t another, you say? Well,
I’m glad of that; set her up, indeed, with a gown like my
niece’s. Now she’s cut this pattern off my piece; I don’t
call that dealing on the square, do you?”
“Miss Moore is a very respectable young woman, and
wouldn't do anything she couldn't stand over, I’m sure,”
said Mr. Marshall, with decision. “ I have done business
with her for a very long time, and I have a great regard
for her.”
“That’s as may be, Mr. Marshall; but if she’s cut a
pattern off my stuff, I don’t call it on the square, and so
I'll tell her.”
Letty was not feeling at all well that afternoon. There
are mental shocks that try the sensitive as much as a
period of illness. In town communities the filching of a
small piece of material would not seem a very serious
matter; the culprit would regard it with indifference, and
the defrauded person would probably not take it very much
to heart. But Grimpat morals were very rigid; neither
Letty nor anybody else regarded a breach of the eighth
commandment lightly.
“She ’ll not want the gown till the spring, and in that
time, maybe, the Lord will somehow give me a chance of
putting things right,” the girl said; but she was not hope-
1104 IRISH LITERATURE.
ful. Letty meant to pray very hard, and to practice divera
good deeds in anxious desire of a miracle. But instead of
a miracle from the sky, came Mrs. Smith up the garden
path—reticule, umbrella, and widow’s weeds complete.
“I called to speak about that bit of silk that you took
charge of for my niece,” said Mrs. Smith, after an inter-
change of greetings. She had not failed to observe Letty’s
start of dismay, and the sudden pallor that followed it.
“Yes, Mrs. Smith.”
“I'm not sure when my niece will be coming, and so I
thought I'd as well send her the bit of stuff, and let her
have it made up at home; so I "II take it.”
“II send it,” said Letty, “it’s too much for you to
carry.”
“Not a bit,” said Mrs. Smith, “ the weight of nine yards
of silk is neither here nor there. I gave you no linings,
did I?”
The girl answered “ No,” faintly.
“ Then it will be lighter to carry.”
Letty went upstairs and took out the piece of silk, and
folded it neatly with hands that were as cold as ice. She
knew she was going to be found out and ruined. At the
moment she wished that she could die; if she were dead,
her misdeed and Mrs. Smith’s comments thereon would
matter less, She stood with her hands resting on the
folded parcel, waiting for some merciful miracle of this
kind, but none came. Her heart beat slowly and faintly,
but it kept on beating. When Letty saw that help would
not come from this quarter, she went downstairs.
“ You ’ve tied it up, have you?” said Mrs. Smith, a little
suspiciously. “You mightn’t have done that without
measuring it, for fear you might give me somebody else's
piece instead of my own.”
“That’s your piece, right enough,” said Letty dully.
“There was only one of that sort.” Then she clutched at
her terror with desperation. “ I'll measure it for you, if
you like, Mrs. Smith.”
This offer reassured the elder lady. “ Not at all, Miss
Moore,” she said with some cordiality. “It’s been all
right in your hands, I’m sure.” Then she took her leave
graciously enough.
Letty looked after the old woman’s rigid figure as she
MRS. ESLER. 1105
walked away. “Maybe she won’t open it for a while, and
in the interval I’ll make her a present worth twice the
value of what I’ve took, then she’ll know, if she thinks
about it at all, that I ve paid her back.”
But Mrs. Smith was not the type of person to act in such
an irrelevant manner; she took off her bonnet and shawl
and gloves when she reached home, but she measured the
silk before she put them away, and the silk was three-
quarters of a yard short.
“One never knows people,” said the lady, nodding to
herself. “I would have thought Letty Moore as honest as
the sun. Well! Ill show her up.”
Drama was rather remote from Mrs. Smith’s experience,
but she saw a good many dramatic possibilities in the
present situation, and they exhilarated her. Herself as
a confiding and defrauded person, Letty Moore as an
abashed culprit, who had long traded on the good faith of
the community, and the whole of Grimpat for an admir-
ing audience, afforded a striking situation. Mrs. Smith
banked up the fire with ashes, because she intended to be
absent some time; then she went back to Letty Moore’s.
Letty was sitting behind the geraniums by the window.
She did not feel able to work that evening, and so was
thankful that work was rather slack. Thus it happened
that she saw Mrs. Smith come in at the little gate. At the
moment she was not able to meet her; like a terrified child
she ran upstairs and hid her face in the pillow of her
little bed.
Mrs. Smith knocked till she was tired, then she lifted
the door latch and entered. The kitchen was empty, but
the worthy woman concluded that Letty was at home,
otherwise she would not have left the door on the latch; she
therefore sat down to await her appearance.
Letty had heard the knocking; the lifting of the latch
was a softer sound, and did not reach her. In the pro-
tracted silence which followed she concluded that Mrs.
Smith had gone away, and so, after a time, she picked up
courage to descend the stairs. But Mrs. Smith was sitting
in wait for her at the stair-foot.
The good woman had rehearsed every form of accusation
in the interval, and had thought of saying, “ You stole my
silk, give me back my silk;” but at sight of the girl, a
70
1106 IRISH LITERATURE.
milder mood came over her, and she said, politely enough,
“T called about that silk, it seems shorter than when I
left it with you.”
“It couldn't be shorter, Mrs. Smith,” said Letty, look-
ing at her antagonist with terrified eyes. “What could
make it shorter? ”
“That ’s what I don’t know,” said the visitor firmly; “I
only know that I gave you nine yards of silk, and that you
gave me back eight and a quarter. I know, too, that you
were trying to match it, for I found the pattern at Mar
shall’s.”
Letty sat down, her hands lying listlessly in her lap, her
face pale and stricken. People have committed a murder
and felt less overwhelmed, at the moment of arrest, than
did honest, upright little Letty Moore, in face of the know!
edge that she was discovered to have “conveyed ” three
quarters of a yard of cheap silk.
“I needn’t deny that I took it, Mrs. Smith, since you
know all about it,” she said slowly. “ I didn’t know it was
a dress length. I thought it had been cut off the piece, and
that I could match it. I knew it came from Marshall's.”
“And what did you want with my silk—what had you
to do with it?” said Mrs. Smith, her anger rising. “It
was stealing, whatever you say.”
“Thad promised Mary Willett a hood, but with Mr. Ted-
ford’s death, and all, I was kept busy until the last minute;
when I went to buy the silk the shops were all closed. If
they had been Grimpat shops, I would have knocked and
made them open, but I couldn't do that at Nutford. I felt
as if I couldn’t break my word to Mary. Your silk was
here in the house, and when I was looking for something
that would do I came on it; I thought if I took what I
wanted off it I could put it back the next day, but Mr. Mar-
shall says it can’t be matched. I am quite willing to make
it good to you in any way you like.”
é IN have my bit of silk, or nothing,” said Mrs. Smith
frigidly. “I don’t want your money, or your trimmings,
or your matchings, I just want my material back again,
and III have it, or I Il know why.”
Letty said nothing, but her silence and her stricken atti-
tude, instead of mollifying Mrs. Smith, goaded her to fury.
“Tf there ’s law in the land or in the Church,” she went
MRS. ESLER. 1107
on, her voice rising, “Ill take the mask off your face—a
meek, pretentious, whited sepulchre. To think of the
gowns, and cloaks, and linings folk have entrusted to you,
Letty Moore, believing in you as if you were the Gospel;
it’s easy to see now how you come to be so well-to-do, with
three-quarters off here, and a yard off there, but I ’ll open
people’s eyes.” .
Letty rose and stood before her accuser.
“Youll have to do what you think right,” she said, in
a suffering, toneless voice. “I never took a thread or a
hook-and-eye belonging to living woman in my life before.
I have told you just the truth of how I came to do it this
time.”
Mrs. Smith gave a snort of infinite scorn. “ Every thief
who is caught says it was the first time. Well see how
many folks have missed things when I show you up. And
you teaching in the Sabbath School, too! Well, next Sab-
bath you can teach the eighth commandment. To think of
such a—a whited sepulchre!” In her vocabulary Mrs.
Smith could not at the moment find another term as scath-
ing. As she spoke she went out, and banged the door
heavily behind her.
Letty resumed the seat she had quitted, and leaning her
elbows on the table, took her face between her hands. She
felt quite cold, and her pulses beat in languid throbs. Mrs.
Smith would tell every one that she had stolen her silk, and
one and another would come to think, in time, that she had
always been dishonest. It would ruin her business, but, a
hundred times worse than that, it would ruin her good
name. To think of all the people who trusted her learning
that she was a thief! To think of the minister, and John
Willett, and his mother, who, in her own way, had been dis-
“posed to favor her! The talk would creep to Nutford, too,
and Mr. Marshall, who had always thought so well of her
as a customer, would probably set some one in future to
watch her when she entered, lest she should secrete the
reels of cotton or remnants of ribbon that were lying loose.
At this thought two slow tears of bitter suffering ran
slowly the length of her pale cheeks.
“God knows I didn’t mean to steal,” she said aloud, and
the tones fell curiously on the still air. “God knows I
never defrauded man or woman before of anything in all
1108 IRISH LITERATURE.
the days of my life.” Then after a long pause she added,
“There is always God.”
She faced the position with despairing patience. Even
God could not bring her blamelessly through it, because she
had taken the piece of silk; she was guilty. Had she been
wrongly accused, she would have met whatever followed,
confidently foreseeing her ultimate justification; but for
the guilty justification was impossible. “I can never hold
up my head again,” she said blankly.
After a little, the sense of physical prostration passing
away, she rose and resorted to her needlework mechani-
cally. But it dropped from her limp hands—she felt too
tired, too stupid, and uninterested.
It was towards dusk when the door opened, and the min-
ister came in. The moment she saw him Letty knew what
he had come to speak about.
Mr. Witherow was a tall, slim man with a clearly cut
and rather rigid face, a face to which anxieties about his
congregation had added as many lines as the years had
done. In creed Mr. Witherow was a Calvinist of the Cal-
vinists, whose ideas of Heaven, and Immortality, and the
Day of Judgment were as clearly defined as his knowledge
of week-day and Sacrament services. Mr. Witherow had
never doubted once in his whole lifetime that, at the Day
of Judgment, he would be called by name to answer before
the assembled nations for each individual member of the
congregation committed to his charge. In his dreams Mr.
Witherow frequently heard himself asked in a voice that
was like a thunder-peal, “ Richard Witherow, what of An-
drew Wilson? Richard Witherow, what of William Burt,
committed to you in the long past?” This made him
thankful that his congregation was small; it made the
attendant anxieties less, and showed him a shorter period
of reckoning on the Dread Day. But it kept his life here
very strenuous, and loaded him with a sense of personal
responsibility that is not generally felt in the profes-
sion.
“I have had a visit from Mrs. Smith,” the minister began
simply. “She is in a terrible state about three-quarters of
a yard of silk that she says you cut off her dress length.”
“T took it,” said Letty slowly. “TI told her I took it.”
Mr. Witherow inclined his head sorrowfully. “I did not
MRS. ESLER. 1109
mean to steal, and she knows that,” Letty pursued stead-
ily. “I offered her any compensation she would accept—”
“She wishes to have you made an example of; she says
you ought to be excommunicated,” said Mr. Witherow, and
his thought was as serious as hid words.
“Tf you will sit down, sir, I will tell you just how it hap-
pened,” said Letty, “and then if you think well to cut me
off from the means of grace—I sha’n’t complain.” Then
she told all the story over again, amid slow, unheeded tears.
“It is very unfortunate,” Mr. Witherow said with a sigh,
when she had concluded. “ To borrow a piece of silk with-
out leave was a very small thing in itself, but it is an
opening of the door to evil. When people borrow money
in that way, meaning to put it back, the act sometimes
brings them penal servitude.”
Letty gave a shudder. “I have been thinking it all out,”
she said; “in old times people were hanged for as little as
this.”
“Indeed yes,” said the minister thoughtfully, “ people
were hanged or transported for the merest trifles; a man
got fourteen years’ penal servitude once, and died under
sentence, for stealing a potato-pie. We have reason to
thank God we are not so cruel nowadays.”
“ I suppose she could have me arrested?” said Letty ina
dreary voice.
“ I dare say she could, and fined, but I don’t think she
will, though I hold her to be a rather bad kind of Chris-
tian; she only wants to expose you, and she will do that,
talking among the neighbors.”
“T think the best thing I can do is to restore sevenfold
and then to go away from here,” the girl said huskily.
“ I? make as good a living among strangers as I can do
at Grimpat, once I have lost my character, and I would
rather not wait for the old neighbors to give me the cold
shoulder. I meant no harm, God knows, but I Il have to
take the consequences of doing harm, all the same.”
“ When Mrs. Smith came I reasoned with her,” said the
minister slowly. “I told her she was showing a very bad
spirit, even if you were guilty, which I did not believe. I
talked to her very seriously.” Then he rose to go. “I will
talk to her again,” he said. “ Have you any objection that
I should offer to restore sevenfold? The Scriptures do not
1110 IRISH LITERATURE.
speak of more, and fourfold was generally held to be suffi-
cient.”
“A hundredfold,” said Letty with a sob. “I have a
little money saved in all these years. I'll give her any-
thing she asks.”
Mr. Witherow felt very depressed as he walked down the
road, not so much by the thought of Letty’s individual suf-
fering as at the thought of all the suffering that so often
follows inadequate causes. “No doubt it is because she
belongs to the elect that her first step astray is punished
so severely,” he said with a sigh. Mr. Witherow firmly
believed that the path of the elect here was thick with
thorns, but in compensation he held that these made for
the safety of pedestrians towards the Kingdom. Then his
thoughts reverted to Mrs. Smith. She certainly was an un-
lovely Christian, but she had been placed in his care, and
he was responsible for her. Her unloveliness would not
justify him if he had one day to answer “I do not know”
to the question “ Richard Witherow, what has become of
Sarah Smith?”
“T’1l tell her of Letty’s offer,” he said; “if she declines
to accept it, I ll excommunicate her for her lack of char-
ity—and that will surprise her more than losing her silk,”
he added, smiling for the first time.
Mrs. Smith was having tea when Mr. Witherow called
on her. She was looking bright and animated, because she
anticipated interesting results from the several calls she
intended to pay before bed-time.
Mr. Witherow took off his hat as he entered, but he did
not accept the seat Mrs. Smith indicated, not intending to
unbend to the intimacy implied in a sitting attitude.
“T have been to see Miss Moore,” he began gravely, “ and
I have learned all particulars regarding your loss. Miss
Moore is willing to restore the value of the silk sevenfold.
What is its value?”
“ The piece cost twenty-seven shillings.”
“Then let us assume that what she took—borrowed
under a misapprehension, actually—is worth half-a-crown.
In lieu of that, she authorizes me to offer you seventeen-
and-sixpence.”
“I won't take it,” said Mrs, Smith triumphantly, “I
MRS. ESLER. 1111
would rather show her up than have the price of twenty
silk dresses.”
“Tf you don’t accept Miss Moore’s offer,” said the min-
ister imperturbably, “I will sammon you before the Ses-
sion. A woman who would want to destroy the character
and prospects of a girl who has lived in our midst since
childhood, and is a credit to the community—”
“A canting publican,” interrupted Mrs. Smith.
“A credit to the community,” Mr. Witherow repeated
firmly. “The woman who would want to destroy her and
her prospects for a half-crown matter, is not only a bad
Christian, but a bad woman.”
“Me!” said Mrs. Smith, with a shriek.
“If the matter comes before the Session we shall have no
option but to excommunicate you,” Mr. Witherow went on.
“Tt will be a great grief to your children in America to
learn that the church in which their father was an elder
has been obliged to excommunicate their mother. It will
be a blot on the family history.”
“I want nothing but my own again, I have a right to
that,” Mrs. Smith maintained stoutly, but the usual color
of her cheek looked thin and veinous, and her breath came
hurriedly.
“To restore your own little bit of silk is impossible
under the circumstances. Miss Moore acknowledges that
she took it. The Bible exacts nothing but confession and
fourfold restitution ; Miss Moore offers sevenfold—you had
better accept her offer.”
“She ’s got you on her side,” said Mrs. Smith bitterly.
“A sleek, canting—”
“Mrs. Smith,” said the minister, “I hope I shall al-
ways be found on the side of the merciful. I desire noth-
ing better either now or at the Last Day. The wish to
ruin a poor young friendless girl could only be prompted
by the devil, and as a minister of the Gospel I will oppose
it, in every corner of the parish. This is my last word. I
am very sorry that a woman of your age, so long held in
esteem by the neighbors, should have ever wished to act
such a cruel and evil part. Good-evening.”
Mr. Witherow had scarcely reached the little gate out-
side the cottage ere Mrs. Smith was after him. “I will
take that seventeen-and-sixpence,” she seid.
1112 IRISH LITERATURE.
Mr. Witherow turned. “Do you understand what that
binds you to?” he asked. “If you accept restitution, and
subsequently talk of your loss, you will be guilty of
slander, a serious offense in the eyes of the law of the
land.”
“I wouldn't be bothered with it,” said Mrs. Smith
fiercely. “ To tie one hand and foot and tongue, and every-
thing, and call this a free country, too!”
Mr. Witherow laid his hand on the old woman's trem-
bling shoulder. “Mrs. Smith,” he said, “your husband
was one of the oldest elders in my congregation when I was
ordained; his was a gentle and beautiful nature; he was
one of the elect—his memory is yet fragrant in our midst.
You are yourself a woman, the mother of other women; you
have been young; possibly that experience is not so remote
that you are unable to recall it. Try on that account to
feel generously, and, because of all that is honorable in
your life-history, to act generously towards a sister wo-
man. No one ever regrets a good deed, while a deliberate
cruelty cannot fail to plant a sharp thorn in that last pil-
low on which each of us must ultimately lay his or her
dying head. You have now an opportunity of behaving
nobly and making me proud of you. I will leave it to your
self to think whether or not you will embrace the oppor-
tunity.”
Towards eight o’clock Letty Moore was reading her
Bible; there are times when people find that the only
refuge. “‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from
whence cometh my help,’ ” she read aloud; as she did so,
she turned her face involuntarily towards the window;
but it was night, and the blind was down. At that mo
ment there came a peremptory knock to the door. Letty
opened it, and Mrs. Smith came in. To see the girl quail
at her approach gave the old woman her last moment of
evil pleasure.
“T came to speak about that silk,” she said.
Letty did not answer; she only waited for the terrible an-
nouncement that was likely to follow. “I was thinking
that maybe you might like to buy the whole of it,” she went
on. “It cost twenty-seven shillings new—you can have it
for that.”
Mrs. Smith was surprised and a little dismayed at the
MRS. ESLER. 1118
passion of Letty’s sudden burst of tears. “ You are a good
woman,” she said between her sobs, “a good, good woman,
though I thought hard things about you! I suppose it was
because I was that miserable. You are a good woman!”
Letty always maintained that nobody knew the greatness
of Mrs. Smith’s nature till there was occasion to test it; in
proof of her greatness she adduced that Mrs. Smith hated
to be praised. When Letty married John Willett, Mrs.
Smith sat beside the minister at the wedding-feast. Be-
yond the circle of those three, there never crept a whisper
of Letty’s misdoing; it is the solitary secret the latter ever
kept from her husband. As to the piece of silk, it still lies
in Letty’s best-room bottom drawer, and when she wants to
remind herself that well-meaning people may go far astray
under sudden temptation, or that human hearts are often
kinder than the careless would believe, she takes out the
piece of silk and looks at it.
THOMAS ETTINGSALL
(1700 ?—1850.)
'THoMas ErrincsaLL was born about the close of the eighteenth
century. He kept a fishing-tackle establishment at Woods Quay,
Dublin, about 1824, and afterward removed to Cork Hill. He was
aclever and witty writer and contributed sketches and stories to
The Irish Penny Journal (1840) and the Dublin Penny Journal
(1832). .
Teas in the last-named magazine, Dec. 15, 1832, that his ‘ Darby
Doyle’s Voyage to Quebec,’ which has been often erroneously at-
tributed to Lover, appeared. He was concerned with H. B. Code
in the authorship of ‘The Angling Excursions of Gregory Green-
drake,’ which was published in Dublin in 1824. He was '' Geoffrey
Greydrake” of that work, which was reprinted from The Warder.
He died, in poor circumstances it is said, about 1850.
DARBY DOYLE’S VOYAGE TO QUEBEC.
I tuck the road, one fine morning in May, from Inche-
gelagh, an’ got up to the Cove safe an’ sound. There I
saw many ships with big broad boords fastened to ropes,
every one ov them saying, “The first vessel for Quebec.”
Siz I to myself, “ Those are about to run for a wager; this
one siz she ’II be first, and that one siz she’ll be first.” At
any rate, I pitched on one that was finely painted, and
looked long and slender like a corragh on the Shannon.
When I wint on boord to ax the fare, who shou’d come up
out ov a hole but Ned Flinn, an ould townsman ov my
own. “Och, is it yoorself that’s there, Ned?” siz I; “are
ye goin’ to Amerrykey?” “Why, an’ to be sure,” siz he;
“Tm mate ov the ship.” “Meat! that’s yer sort, Ned,”
siz I; “then we ’ll only want bread. Hadn’t I betther go
and pay my way?” “You "re time enough,” siz Ned; “III
tell you when we ’re ready for sea—leave the rest to me,
Darby.” “Och, tip us your fist,” siz I; “you were always
the broath ov a boy; for the sake ov ould times, Ned, we
must have a dhrop.”
So, my jewel, Ned brought me to where there was right
good stuff. When it got up to three o'clock I found myself
mighty weak with hunger. I got the smell ov corn beef an’
1114
THOMAS ET1'INGSALL. 1115
cabbage that knock’d me up entirely. I then wint to the
landleddy, and siz I to her, “ Maybee your leddyship id not
think me rood by axin’ iv Ned and myself cou’d get our
dinner ov that fine hot mate that I got a taste ov in my
nose?” “In troath you can,” siz she (an’ she look’d
mighty pleasant), “ an’ welkim.” So, my darlin’ dish and
all came up. “ That 's what I call a flaugholoch} mess,” siz
I. So we eat and drank away. Many’s the squeeze Ned
gave my fist, telling me to leave it all to him, and how
comfortable he’d make me on the voyage. Day afther day
we spint together, waitin’ for the wind, till I found my
pockets begin to grow very light.
At last, siz he to me, one day afther dinner, “ Darby, the
ship will be ready for sea on the morrow—you ’d betther
go on boord, an’ pay your way.” “Is it jokin’ you are,
Ned?” siz I; “shure you tould me to leave it all to you.”
“ Ah! Darby,” siz he, “you 're for takin’ a rise out o’ me;
shure enough, ye were the lad that was never without a
joke—the very priest himself cou’dn’t get over ye. But,
Darby, there ’s no joke like the thrue one. II stick to my
promise; but, Darby, you must pay your way.” “O Ned,”
siz I, “is this the way you’re goin’ to threat me afther
all? I’m a rooin’d man; all I cou’d scrape together I spint
on you. If you don’t do something for me, I’m lost. Is
there no place where you cou’d hide me from the captin? ”
“Not a place,” siz Ned. “ An” where, Ned, is the place I
saw you comin’ out ov?” “Oh, Darby, that was the hould
where the cargo ’s stow’d.”” “ An’ is there no other place? ”
siz I. “Oh, yes,” siz he, “where we keep the wather
casks.” “An’, Ned,” siz I, “does any one live down
there?” “Not a mother’s soul,” siz he. “ An’, Ned,” siz
I, “can’t you cram me down there, and give me a lock ov
straw an’ a bit?” “Why, Darby,” siz he (an’ he look’d
mighty pittyful), “I must thry. But mind, Darby, you’ll
have to hide all day in an empty barrel, an’ when it comes
to my watch, I'll bring you down some prog; but if you re
diskiver’d, it’s all over with me, an’ you’ll be put on a
dissilute island to starve.” “ O Ned,” siz I, “leave it all to
me.” “Never fear, Darby, I'll mind my eye.” When
night cum on I got down into the dark cellar, among the
barrels; poor Ned fixt a place in a corner for me to sleep,
1 Flaugholoch, princely—i. e. a fine mess.
1116 IRISH LITERATURE.
an’ every night he brought me down hard black cakes an’
salt meat. There I lay snug for a whole month.
At last, one night, siz he to me, “ Now, Darby, what’s
to be done? we’re within three days’ sail of Quebec; the
ship will be overhauled, and all the passengers’ names
call’d over; if you are found, you ’ll be sould as a slave for
your passage money.” “ An’ is that all that frets you,
my jewel,” siz I; “ can’t you leave it all to me? In throath,
Ned, I’ll never forget your hospitality at any rate. But,
what place is outside of the ship?” “ Why, the sea, to be
sure,” siz he. “Och! botheration,” siz I, “I mean what ’s
the outside the ship?” “Why, Darby,” siz he, “part of
it’s called the bulwark.” “ An’ fire an’ faggots,” siz I, “is
it bulls work the vessel along?” “No, nor horses,” siz
he, “ neither; this is no time for jokin’; what do you mean
todo?” “Why, II tell you, Ned; get me an empty meal-
bag, a bottle, an’ a bare ham-bone, and that’s all I 11 ax.”
So, begad, Ned look’d very queer at me; so he got them for
me, anyhow. “ Well, Ned,” siz I, “ you know I’m a great
shwimmer; your watch will be early in the mornin’; III
jist slip down into the sea; do you cry out, there’s a man
in the wather, as loud as you can, and leave all the rest to
me.”
Well, to be sure, down into the sea I dropt without so
much asa splash. Ned roared out with the hoarseness of a
brayin’ ass—“ a man in the sea! a man in the sea!” Every
man, woman, and child came running up out of the holes,
the captin among the rest, who put a long red barrel like a
gun to his eye—gibbet me, but I thought he was for
shootin’ me! down I dived. When I got my head over the
wather agen, what shou’d I see but a boat rowin’ to me, as
fast as a throut afther a pinkeen.! When it came up close
enough to be heard, I roared out: “ Bad end to yees, for a
set ov spalpeen rascals, did ye hear me at last?” The boat
now run ’pon the top ov me; down I dived agen like a duck
afther a frog, but the minnit my skull.came over the
wather, I was gript by the scruff ov the neck, and dhragged
into the boat. To be shure, I didn’t kick up a row—* Let
go my hair, ye blue devils,” I roared; “it’s well ye have me
in your marcy in this dissilute place, or by the powthers
I’d make ye feel the strinth ov my bones. What hard look
1 Pinkeen, a small fish.
THOMAS ETTINGSALL. 1117
I had to follow yees, at all at all—which ov ye is the mas-
ther?” As I sed this every mother’s son began to stare at
me, with my bag round my neck, an’ my bottle by my side,
an’ the bare bone in my fist. “There he is,” siz they,
pointin’ to a little yellow man in a corner of the boat.
“ May the —— rise blisthers on your rapin’-hook shins,”
siz I, “ you yallow-lookin’ monkey, but it’s a’most time for
you to think ov lettin’ me into your ship—I ’m here plowin’
and plungin’ this month afther ye; shure I didn’t care
a thrawneen was it not that you have my best Sunday
clothes in your ship, and my name in your books. For
three sthraws, if I don’t know how to write, I'd leave my
mark, an’ that on your skull ”; so saying I made a lick at
him with the ham-bone, but I was near tumblin’ into the
sea agen. “ An’, pray, what is your name, my lad?” siz
the captin. “What’s my name! What id you give to
know?” siz I; “ye unmannerly spalpeen, it might be
what’s your name, Darby Doyle, out ov your mouth—ay,
Darby Doyle, that was never afraid or ashamed to own it
at home or abroad!” “ An’, Mr. Darby Doyle,” siz he, “do
you mean to persuade us that you swum from Cork to this
afther us?” “This is more ov your ignorance,” siz I—
“ay, an’ if you sted three days longer and not take me up,
I’d be in Quebec before ye, only my purvisions were out,
and the few rags ov bank notes I had all melted into paste
in my pocket, for I hadn’t time to get them changed. But
stay, wait till I get my foot on shore; there’s ne’er a cot-
toner in Cork iv you don’t pay for leavin’ me to the marcy
ov the waves.”
All this time the blue chaps were pushin’ the boat with
sticks through the wather, till at last we came close to the
ship. Every one on board saw me at the Cove, but didn’t
see me on the voyage; to be sure, every one’s mouth was
wide open, crying out Darby Doyle. “The —— stop your
throats,” siz I, “it’s now you call me loud enough; ye
wouldn’t shout that way when ye saw me rowlin’ like a tub
in a millrace the other day forenenst your faces.” When
they heard me say that, some of them grew pale as a sheet
—every thumb was at work till they a’most brought the
blood from their forreds. But, my jewel, the captin does
no more than runs to the book, an’ calls out the names that
paid, and them that wasn’t paid—to be shure, I was one ov
1118 IRISH LITERATURE.
them that didn’t pay. If the captin looked at me before
with wondherment, he now looked with astonishment!
Nothin’ was tawk’d ov for the other three days but Darby
Doyle’s great shwim from the Cove to Quebec. One sed,
“T always knew Darby to be a great shwimmer.” “Do
ye remimber,” siz another, “when Darby’s dog was nigh
been drownded in the great duck hunt, when Darby peeled
off and brought in the dog, and made afther the duck him-
self, and swum for two hours endways; and do ye remimber
when all the dogs gother round the duck at one time; whin
it wint down how Darby dived afther it, and sted down
for a’most an hour—and sted below while the creathur
was eatin’ a few frogs, for she was weak an’ hungry; and
when everybody thought he was lost, up he came with the
duck by the leg in his kithogue? ”*
Begar, I agreed to all they sed, till at last we got to
Amerrykey. I was now in a quare way; the captin
wouldn’t let me go till a friend of his would see me. By
this time, my jewel, not only his friends came, but swarms
upon swarms, starin’ at poor Darby. At last I called Ned.
“Ned, avic,” siz I, “I want to go about my bisness.” “ Be
easy, Darby,” siz he; “ haven't ye your fill ov good aitin’?
an’ the captin’s got mighty fond ov ye entirely.” “ Is he,
Ned?” siz I; “but tell us, Ned, are all them crowds ov
people goin’ to sea?” “ Augh, ye omadhaun,”? siz Ned,
“sure they are come to look at you.” Just as he said this,
a tall yallow man, with a black curly head, comes and
stares me full in the face. “ You’ll know me agen,” says I,
“bad luck to yer manners and the schoolmasther that
taught ye.” But I thought he was goin’ to shake hands
with me, when he tuck hould ov my fist and opened every
finger, one by one, then opened my shirt and look’t at my
breast. “Pull away, ma-bouchal,” siz I, “I’m no desar-
thur, at any rate.” But never an answer he made, but
walk’d down into the hole where the captin lived. “ This
is more ov it,” siz I; “ Ned, what cou’d that tallah-faced
man mean?” “Why,” siz Ned, “he was lookin’ to see iv
your fingers were webb’d, or had ye scales on your breast.”
“ His impidence is great,” siz I; “ did he take me for a duck
or a bream? But, Ned, what’s the meanin’ ov the boords
acrass the stick the people walk on, and the big white boord
á Kithogue, left hand. * Omadhaun, silly fellow.
THOMAS ETTINGSALL. 1119
up there?” “Why, come over and read,” siz Ned. But,
my jewel, I didn’t know whether I was stannin’ on my head
or on my heels when I saw in great big black letters—
THE GREATEST WONDHER OF THE WORLD!!!
TO BE SEEN HERE,
A Man that beats out Nicholas the Diver!
He has swum from Cork to Amerrykey!!
Proved on oath by ten of the Crew and twenty Passengers.
Admittance Half a Dollar.
“ Bloody wars! Ned,” siz I, “ does this mean your humble
sarvint?” “ Divil another,” siz he,—so I makes no more
ado, than with a hop, skip, and jump, gets over to the
captin, who was now talkin’ to the yallow fellow that was
afther starin’ me out ov countenance. “Pardon my rude-
ness, your honor,” siz I, mighty polite, and makin’ a bow
—at the same time Ned was at my heels—so rising my foot
to give the genteel scrape, sure I scraped all the skin off
Ned’s shins. “May bad luck to your brogues,” siz he.
“You ’d betther not curse the wearer,” siz I, “or ——”
“Oh, Darby!” siz the captin, “don’t be unginteel, an’ so
many ladies and gintlemin lookin’ at ye.” “The never an
other mother’s soul shall lay their peepers on me till I see
sweet Inchegelagh agen,” says I. “ Begar ye are doin’ it
well. How much money have ye gother for my shwim-
min’?” “Be quiet, Darby,” siz the captin, and he looked
very much friekened. “I have plenty, an’ I’ll have more
for ye iv ye do what I want ye to do.” “An’ what is it,
avic?” siz I. “ Why, Darby,” siz he, “I’m afther houldin’
a wager last night with this gintleman for all the worth ov
my ship, that you ’ll shwim against any shwimmer in the
world; an’, Darby, if ye don’t do that, I’m a gone man.”
“Augh, give us your fist,” siz I; “did ye ever hear ov
Paddy’s dishaving any man in the European world yet—
barrin’ themselves?” “Well, Darby,” siz he, “I’ll give
you a hundred dollars; but, Darby, you must be to your
word, and you shall have another hundred.”
So sayin’, he brought me down into the cellar; but, my
jewel, I didn’t think for the life ov me to see such a won-
1120 IRISH LITERATURE.
dherful place—nothin’ but goold every way I turned, and
Darby’s own sweet face in twenty places. Begar I was
a’most ashamed to ax the gintleman for the dollars. “ But,”
siz I to myself agen, “ the gintleman has too much money.
I suppose he does be throwin’ it into the sea, for I often
heard the sea was richer than the land, so I may as well
take it anyhow.” “Now, Darby,” siz he, “here ’s the dol-
lars for ye.” But, begar, it was only a bit of paper he was
handin’ me. “ Arrah, none ov yer tricks upon thravelers,”
siz I; “I had betther nor that, and many more ov them,
melted in the sea; give me what won’t wash out ov my
pocket.” “Why, Darby,” siz he, “this is an ordher on a
merchant for the amount.” “ Pho, pho! ” siz I, “ I'd sooner
take your word nor his oath ”—lookin’ round mighty re-
spectful at the goold walls. “ Well, Darby,” siz he, “ye
must have the real thing.” So, by the powthers, he reck-
on’d me out a hundred dollars in goold. I never saw the
like since the stockin’ fell out of the chimly on my aunt
and cut her forred. “Now, Darby,” siz he, “ye are a rich
man, an’ ye are worthy of it all—sit down, Darby, an’ take
a bottle ov wine.” So to please the gintleman, I sat down.
Afther a bit, who comes down but Ned. “Captin,” siz he,
“the deck is crowded; I had to block up the gangway to
prevint any more from comin’ in to see Darby. Bring him
up, or, blow me, iv the ship won’t be sunk.” “Come up,
Darby,” siz the captin’, lookin’ roguish pleasant at myself.
So, my jewel, he handed me up through the hall as tendher
as iv I was a lady, or a pound ov fresh butther in the dog
lays.
When I got up, shure enough, I couldn’t help starin’;
such crowds of fine ladies and yallow gintlemen never was
seen before in any ship. One ov them, a little rosy-cheek’d
beauty, whispered the captin somethin’, but he shuk his
head, and then came over to me. “ Darby,” siz he, “ I know
an Irishman would do anything to please a lady.” “In
throth you may say that with yer own ugly mouth,” siz I.
“Well, then, Darby,” siz he, “ the ladies would wish to see
you give a few strokes in the sea.” “Och, an’ they shall
have them in welcome,” siz I. “ That’s a good fellow,” siz
he; “now strip off.” “Decency, Katty,” siz I; “is it in
my mother-naked pelt before the ladies? Bad luck to the
undacent brazen-faced—but no matther! Irish girls for-
THOMAS ETTINGSALL. 1121
ever, afther all!” But all to no use. I was made to peel
off behind a big sheet, and then I made one race and jumpt
ten yards into the wather to get out ov their sight. Shure
enough, every one’s eyes danced in their head, while they
look’d on the spot where I went down. A thought came
into my head while I was below, how I'd show them a little
divarsion, as I could use a great many thricks on the
wather. So I didn’t rise at all till I got to the tother side,
and every one run to that side; then I took a hoult ov my
two big toes, and, makin’ a ring ov myself, rowled like a.
hoop on the top ov the wather all round the ship. I b’leeve
I opened their eyes! Then I yarded, back-swum, an’ dived,
till at last the captin made signs for me to come out, so I
got into the boat an’ threw on my duds. The very ladies
were breakin’ their necks runnin’ to shake hands with me.
“Shure,” siz they, “you’re the greatest man in the
world!!” So for three days I showed off to crowds ov
people, though I was fryin’ in the wather for shame.
At last the day came that I was to stand the tug. I saw
the captin lookin’ very often at me. At last, “ Darby,” siz
he, “ are you anyway cow’d? The fellow you have to shwim
agenst can shwim down watherfalls an’ catharacts.”
“Can, he, avic? ” siz I; “ but can he shwim up agenst them?
Wow, wow, Darby, for that! But, captin, come here; is all
my purvisions ready?—don’t let me fall short ov a dhrop
ov the rale stuff above all things.” An’ who shou’d come
up while I was tawkin’ to the captin but the chap I was to
shwim with, an’ heard all I sed. Begar! his eyes grew as
big as two oysther shells. Then the captin call’d me aside.
“Darby,” siz he, “do ye put on this green jacket an’ white
throwsers, that the people may betther extinguish you from
the other chap.” “ With all hearts, avic,” siz I, “ green for
ever—Darby’s own favorite color the world over; but
where am I goin’ to, captin?” “To the shwimmin’ place,
to be shure,” siz he. “ Divil shoot the failers an’ take the
hindmost,” siz I; “here ’s at ye.”
I was then inthrojuiced to the shwimmer. I look’d at
him from head to foot. He was so tall that he could eat
bread an’ butther over my head—with a face as yallow as a
kite’s foot. “Tip up the mitten,” siz I, “ ma-bouchal,” siz
I. (But, begad, I was puzzled. “ Begar,” siz I to myself,
“I a done. Cheer up, Darby! If I”m not able to kill him,
1122 IRISH LITERATURE.
I'll frighten the life out ov him.”) “Where are we goin’
to shwim to?” But never a word he answered. “ Are ye
bothered, neighbor?” “I reckon I’m not,” siz he, mighty
chuff. “ Well, then,” siz I, “ why didn’t ye answer your bet-
thers? What id ye think iv we shwum to Keep Cleer or the
Keep ov Good Hope?”. “I reckon neither,” siz he agen,
eyein’ me as iv I was goin’ to pick his pockets. “ Well,
then, have ye any favorite place?” siz I. “Now, I’ve
heard a great deal about the place where poor Boney died;
I’d like to see it, iv I’d any one to show me the place;
Suppose we wint there?” Not a taste of a word cou’d I get
out ov him, good or bad.
Off we set through the crowds ov ladies an’ gintlemen.
Such cheerin’ and wavin’ ov hats was never seen even at
Dan’s enthry; an’ then the row ov purty girls laughin’ an’
rubbin’ up against me, that I cou’d har’ly get on. To be
shure, no one cou’d be lookin’ to the ground, an’ not be
lookin’ at them, till at last I was thript up by a big loomp
ov iron stuck fast in the ground with a big ring to it.
“Whoo, Darby!” siz I, makin’ a hop an’ a crack ov my
fingers, “ you ’re not down yet.” I turn’d roun’ to look at
what thript me. “What d’ ye call that?” siz I to the
captin, who was at my elbow. “Why, Darby?” siz he;
“that’s half an anchor.” “Have ye any use for it?” siz
I. “Not in the least,” siz he; “it’s only to fasten boats
to.” “Maybee, you’d give it to a body,” siz I. “ An’ wel-
kim, Darby,” siz he; “it’s yours.” “God bless your
honor, sir,” siz I, “it’s my poor father that will pray for
you. When I left home the creather hadn’t as much as an
anvil but what was sthreeled away by the agint—bad end
to them. This will be jist the thing that 11 match him; he
can tie the horse to the ring, while he forges on the other
part.
“Now, will ye obleege me by gettin’ a couple ov chaps to
lay it on my shoulder when I get into the wather, and I
won't have to be comin’ back for it afther I shake hans with
this fellow.” Begar, the chap turned from yallow to white
when he heard me say this. An’ siz he to the gintleman
that was walkin’ by his side, “ I reckon I’m not fit for the
shwimmin’ to-day—I don’t feel myself.” “ An’ murdher
an Irish, if you "re yer brother, can’t you send him for yer-
self, an’ I'll wait here till he comes? Here, man, take a
THOMAS ETTINGSALL. 1123
dhrop ov this before ye go. Here’s to yer betther health,
and your brother’s into the bargain.” So I took off my
glass, and handed him another; but the never a dhrop ov
it he'd take. “No force,” siz I, “avic; maybee you think
there ’s poison in it—well, here ’s another good luck to us.
An’ when will ye be able for the shwim, avic?” siz I,
mighty complisant. “I reckon in another week,” siz he.
So we shook hands and parted. The poor fellow went
home—took the fever—then began to rave. “Shwim up
the catharacts!—shwim to the Keep ov Good Hope!—
shwim to St. Helena !—shwim to Keep Cleer!—shwim with
an anchor on his back !—Oh! oh! oh!”
I now thought it best to be on the move; so I gother up
my winners; and here I sit undher my own hickory threes,
as independent as any Yankee.
FRANCIS A. FAHY.
(1854 —)
Francis A. Fany was born in Kinvara, County Galway, Sept.
29, 1854. At the age of sixteen he wrote a play, ‘The Last of the
O’Learys,’ which was performed in his native town. He went to
London as a civil service clerk in 1873, where he still lives. He
has taken an active part in various Irish literary movements in
London, especially in the formation of the Southwark Irish Literary
Club and the Irish Literary Society, which grew out of it. He
wrote many poems for the Irish papers, signed “ Dreoilín " (the
Wren) and in 1887 published a collection of Irish songs and poems
in Dublin.
His songs are eminently singable and many of them are well-
known favorites in the concert-hall and drawing-room. They are
not only artless, simple, and winning, but all ther Irish in their
admixture of humor, sentiment, and pathos. ugh in some re-
spects his name may well be bracketed With that of For A. P. Graves,
he differs from him in that '' Dreoilín” sings of the inner and
home life of the people, while Mr. Graves’ songs are almost all
and deal with out-of-door life.
HOW TO BECOME A POET.
Of all the sayings which have misled mankind from the
days of Adam to Churchill, not one has been more harmful
than the old Latin one, “ A poet is born, not made.”
The human intellect, it is said, may, by patient toil and
study, gather laurels in all fields of knowledge save one—
that of poesy. You may, by dint of hard work, become
a captain in the Salvation Army, a corporation crossing-
Sweeper—ay, even an unsuccessful Chief Secretary for
Ireland; but no amount of labor or perseverance will win
you the favor of the Muses unless those fickle-minded
ladies have presided at your birth, wrapped you, so to
speak, in the swadding clothes of metre, and fashioned
your first yells according to the laws of rhythm and rhyme.
Foolish, fatal fallacy! How many geniuses has it not
nipped in the bud—how many vaulting ambitions has it
not brought to grief, what treasures of melody has it not
shut up for ever to mankind!
Hence the paucity of poetical contributions to the press,
the eagerness of publishers to secure the slightest scrap of
1124
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1125
verse, the bashfulness and timidity of authors, who yet in
their hearts are quite contident of their ability to transcend
the best efforts of the “ stars ” of ancient or modern song.
Now the first thing that will strike you in reading poeti-
cal pieces is the fact that nearly all the lines end in rhymed
words, or words ending in similar sounds, such as “kick,
lick, stick,” “drink, ink, wink,” etc.
This constitutes the real difference between prose and
poetry. For instance, the phrase, “The dread monarch
stood on his head,” is prose, but
‘The monarch dread
Stood on his head.”
is undeniable poetry.
Rhyme, is, in fact, the chief or only feature in modern
poetry. Get your endings to rhyme and you need trouble
your head about little else. A certain amount of common
sense is demanded by severe critics; the gencral public,
however, never look for it, would be astonished to find it,
and, as a matter of fact, seldom or never do find it.
By careful study of the best authors you will soon dis-
cover what words rhyme with each other, and these you
should diligently record in a small note-book, procurable at
any respectable stationers’ for the ridiculously small sum
of one penny.
Few researches afford keener intellectual pleasure than
the discovery of rhymes, in such words, say, as “cat, rat,
Pat, scat,” “shed, head, said, dead,” and it is excellent
elementary training for the young poet to combine such
words into versed sentences, and even sing them to a
popular operatic air.
For example—
‘With that the cat
Sprang at the rat,
Whereat poor Pat
Yelled out ‘ Iss-cat.’
The roof of the shed
Fell plop on his head,
No more he said,
But fell down dead.”
These first efforts of your muse are of high interest, and,
although it would not be advisable to rush to press with
1126 IRISH LITERATURE.
them, they should be sedulously preserved for the use of
future biographers, when fame, honors, and emoluments
shall have showered in upon you.
A little caution is needed in the use of such rhymes as
“fire, higher, Maria,” “ Hannah, manner, dinner,” “ fight,
riot, quiet.” There is excellent authority for these, but it
is well to recognize that an absurd prejudice does exist
against them.
You will soon make the profitable discovery that there is
a host of words, the members of which run, like beagles, in
couples, the one invariably suggesting the other, such as
“peeler, squealer”; “lick, stick”; “Ireland, sireland”;
“ocean, commotion,” and so on.
“Twas then my bold peeler
Made after the squealer ;”
“He fetched him a lick
Of a murdering stick;”
“His shriek spread from Ireland,
My own beloved sireland;”
‘+ And raised a commotion
Beyond the wide ocean.”
Were it not for such handy couplets as these, most of
our modern bards would be forced to earn their bread
honestly.
Of equal importance is “apt alliteration’s artful aid.”
It consists in stringing together a number of words begin-
ning with the same letter. A large school of our bards owe
their fame to this figure. You should make a free use of it
How effective are such phrases as “ For Freedom, Faith,
and Fatherland we fight or fall”; “ Dear Dirty Dublin’s
damp and dreary dungeons ”; “ Softy shone the setting sun
in Summer splendor”; “ Blow the blooming heather”;
“Winter winds are wailing wildly.”
Of great effect at this stage of your progress will be the
adroit and unstinted employment of such phrases as “I
wis,” “I wot,” “I trow,” “In sooth,” “ Methinks,” “Of
yore,” “Erstwhile,” “Alack,” a plentiful sprinkling of
which, like currants in a cake, will impart a quaint poeti-
cal flavor to your verses, making up for a total want of
sense and sentiment. Observe their effect in the following
admirable lines from Skott :—
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1127
“Tt were, I ween, a bootless task to tell
How here, of yore, in sooth, the foeman fell,
Erstwhile the Paynim sank with eerie yell,
Alack, in goodly guise, forsooth, to ——”
Of like value are words melodious in sound or poetical
in suggestion, like “ nightingale,” “ moonlight,” “ rounde-
lay,” “trill,” “dreamy,” and so on, which, freely used,
throw a glamour over the imagination and lull thought, the
chiefest value of verse nowadays.
“ There trills the nightingale his roundelay
In dreamy moonlight till the dawn of day. ”
Note that in poetic diction you must by no means “ call
a spade a spade.” The statement of a plain fact is highly
objectionable, and a roundabout expression has to be re-
sorted to. For example, if a girl have red hair, describe it
as
“Glowing with the glory of the golden God of Day,”
or, if Nature has blest her with a “ pug-nose,” you should,
like Tennyson, describe it as
‘Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower.”
For similar reasons words of mean significance have to
be avoided. For instance, for “dead drunk,” use “ spirit-
uously disguised ”; for “ thirty days in quod,” “one moon
in durance vile.” You may now be said to have mastered
the rudiments of modern poetry, and your future course
is easy.
You may now choose, although it is not at all essential,
to write on a subject conveying some meaning to your
reader’s mind. You would do well to try one of a familiar
kind, or of personal or everyday interest, of which the
following are specimens :—“ Lines on beholding a dead
rat in the street”; “Impromptu on being asked to have
a drink ”; “ Reverie on being asked to stand one”; “ Epi-
taph on my mother-in-law”; “Ode to my creditors”;
“Morning soliloquy in a police cell”; “Acrostic on a
shillelah.” Through pieces of this character the soul of
the writer permeates. Hence their abiding value and
1128 IRISH LITERATURE.
permanency on second-hand book-stalls. Then you may
seek “ fresh woods and pastures new,” and weave garlands
in fields untrod by the ordinary bard. One of these is
“Spring.” Conceive the idea of that season in your mind
Winter gone, Summer coming, coughs being cured, over-
coats put up the spout, streets dryer, coals cheaper, or—if
you love nature—the strange facts of the leaves budding,
winds surging, etc. Then probably the spirit (waterproof)
of poesy will take possession of you, and you will blossom
into song as follows :—
“’T is the Spring! "Tis the Spring !
Little birds begin to sing. Pring
See | the lark is on the wing,
The sun shines out like anything ;
And the sweet and tender lamb
Skips besides his great big dam,
While the rough and horny ram
Thinketh single life a sham.
“ Now the East is in the breeze,
Now old maids begin to sneeze,
Now the leaves are on the trees,
Now I cannot choose but sing :
Oh, 't is Spring ! 't is Spring | 't is Spring 1”
Verses like the above have an intrinsic charm, but
if you should think them too trivial, you may soar into
the higher regions of thought, and expand your soul in
epics on, say, “ The Creation,” “The Deluge,” “ The Fall
of Rome,” “The Future of Man.” You possibly know
nothing whatever of those subjects, but that is an advan
tage, as you will bring a fresh unhackneyed mind to bear
upon them.
I need hardly tell you that there is one subject above all
others whose most fitting garb is poetry, and that is—LovB
Fall in love if you can. It is easy—nothing easier to
a poet. He is mostly always in love, and with ten at a
time. But if you cannot, or (hapless wretch!) if you find
it an entirely óne-sided affair—very little free trade, and
no reciprocity—ay, even if you be a married man who
walketh the floor of nights, and vainly seeketh to soothe
the seventh olive-branch—despair not. To write of Love,
needeth not to feel it. If not in love, imagine you are.
Extol in unmeasured terms the beauty of your adored one
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1129
—matchless, as the pipe-bearing stranger in the street—
peerless, as the American House of Representatives.
Safely call on mankind to produce her equal, and inform
the world that you would give up all its honors and
riches (of which you own none) for the sake of your
Dulcinea; but tell them not the fact that you would not
forego your nightly pipe and glass of rum punch for the
best woman that ever breathed. Cultivate a melancholy
mood. Call the fair one all sorts of names, heartless, cold,
exacting—yourself, a miserable wight, hurrying hot haste
to an early grave, and bid her come and shed unavailing
tears there. At the same time keep your strength up, and
don’t forget your four meals a day and a collation.
I need not touch on the number of feet required in the
various kinds of verse, as if a verse lacks a foot anywhere
you are almost sure to put yours in it.
And now to “ cast your lines in pleasant places.”
Having fairly mastered the gamut of poetical composi-
tion, you will be open to a few hints as to the publication
of your effusions. It is often suggested that the opinion of
a friend should be consulted at the outset as to their value.
Of course you may do so, but, as friends go nowadays, you
must be prepared to ignore his verdict. It is now you will
discover that even the judgment of your dearest and most
intellectual friend is not alone untrustworthy, but really
below contempt, and that what he styles his candor is
nothing less than brutality. I have known the greatest
coolnesses ascribable to this cause, and the noblest off-
spring of the muse consigned to oblivion in weak defer-
ence to a friendly opinion. On the other hand, it is often
of great value to read aloud your longest epics to some
one who is in any way indebted to you and cannot well
resent it.
Where the poet’s corners of so many papers await you,
the choice of a medium to convey your burning thoughts to
the world will be easily made. You will scarcely be liable,
I hope, to the confusion of mind of a friend of mine who,
in mistake, sent his “Ode to Death” to the editor of a
comic paper, and found it accepted as eminently suitable.
You should write your poem carefully on superfine paper
with as little blotting, scratching, and bad spelling as you
can manage.
1130 IRISH LITERATURE.
To smooth the way to insertion, you might also write a
conciliatory note to the editor, somewhat in this vein :—
“ RESPECTED S1R,—It is with much diffidence that a young poet of
seventeen (no mention of the wifeand five children) begs to send you
his first attempt to woo the Muses (it may be your eighty-first, buí no
matter). Hoping the same may be deemed worthy of insertion inthe
widely read columns of your admirable journal, with whose opinions
I have the great pleasure of being in thorough accord (you may have
never read a line of it before), I have the honor to be, respected sir,
your obedient humble servant, Homer.
“ P.8.—TH inserted, kindly affix my full name as A. B.; if not, my
nom-de-plume, ‘ Homer.’
west inserted send me twenty copies of your valuable paper.
— Homer.
It will be vain to attempt to describe your feelings from
the time you post that letter until you know the result of
your venture. Your reason is unhinged; you cannot rest
or sleep. You hang about that newspaper office for hours
before the expected edition is out of the press. At last it
appears. Trembling with eagerness you seize the coveted
issue, and disregarding the “ Double Murder and Suicide
in ——,” the “Collapse of the Bank of ——,” the “Out-
break of War between France and Germany,” you dash to
the poet’s corner and search with dazed eyes for your fate.
You may have vaguely heard, at some period of your life,
of the mean, petty jealousies that befoul the clear current
of journalism, and frown down new and aspiring talent,
however promising, and you may have indignantly refused
to believe such statements. Alas! now shall you feel the
full force of their truth in your own person.
You look for your poem blindly, confusedly—amazed,
bewildered, disgusted! You turn that paper inside out,
upside down; you search in the Parliamentary debates, in
the Money Market, in the Births, Deaths, and Marriages,
in the advertisements—everywhere. No sign of it!
With your heart in your boots you turn to the “ Answers
to Correspondents,” there to find your nom-de-plume head-
ing some scurrilous inanity from the editorial chair, of one
or other of the following patterns :—
““Homer— Don't try again 1”
“Homer—Sweet seventeen. So young, so innocent. Hence we
spare you.”
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1131
“ Homer—Have you no friends to look after you?”
“ Homer—Do you really expect us to ruin this paper f”
“Homer—Send it to the Telegraph man. We have a grudge
against him.” .
“ Homer—The 71st Ode to Spring this year! And yet we live.”
While it would be quite natural to indulge in any num-
ber of “cuss” words, your best plan will be to veil your
wrath, and, refraining from smashing the editorial win-
dows, write the editor a studiously polite letter, asking
him to be good enough to point out for your benefit any
errors or defects in the poem submitted to him. This will
fairly corner him, and he will probably be driven to dis-
close his meanness in the next issue :—
“ Homer—If you will engage to bay for the working of this journal
during the twelve months it would take us to explain the defects in
your poem, we are quite willing to undertake the job.”
Insults and disappointments like these are the ordinary
lot of rising genius, and should only nerve you to greater
efforts. Perseverance will ultimately win, though it may
not deserve, success.
And who shall paint the joy that will irradiate life when
you find yourself in print for the first time? who shall de-
scribe the delirium of reading your own verses? a delight
leading you almost to forgive the printer’s ‘error which
turns your “blessed rule” into “blasted fool,” and your
“Spring quickens” into “Spring chickens”; who will
count the copies of that paper you will send to all your
friends?
By-and-bye your fame spreads and you rank of the élite;
you assume the air and manners of a poet. You wear
your hair long (it saves barber’s charges). You are fond
of solitary walks, communing with yourself (or somebody
else). You assume a rapt and abstracted air in society
(when asked to stand a drink). You despise mere mun-
dane matters (debts, engagements, and the like). Your
eyes have a far-away look (when you meet a poor relation).
When people talk of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, etc.,
you smile pityingly, and say: “ Ah, yes! Poor Alfred (or
Robert or Algernon, as the case may be) ; he means well—
he means well ”; and you ask your friends if they have read
your “Spirit Reveries,” and if not, you immediately pro-
1132 IRISH LITERATURE.
duce it from your pocket, and read it (never be without
copies of your latest pieces for this purpose).
And now farewell and God-speed. You are on the high
road to renown.
“Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour,
They crown you with laurels and throne you in power,
Oh, think of the friend who first guided your way,
And set you such rules you could not go astray,
And who, as reward, doth but one favor claim,
That you won't dedicate your first vol. to his name.”
THE DONOVANS.
If you would like to see the height of hospitality,
The cream of kindly welcome, and the core of cordiality:
Joys of all the olden time—you're wishing to recall again?
Come down to Donovans, and there you’ll meet them all
again.
Céad mile fáilte! theyll give you down at Donovans,
As cheery as the springtime and Irish as the cannawaun?
The wish of my heart is, if ever I had any one—
That every luck that lightens life may light upon the
Donovans.
As soon as e’er you lift the latch, the little ones are meeting
you;
Soon as you’re beneath the thatch, oh! kindly looks are greet-
ing you:
Scarcely are you ready to be holding out the fist to them,
When down by the fireside you ’re sitting in the midst of them.
Céad mile fáilte they 11 give you down at Donovans, &c.
There sits the cailín deas 3—oh! where on earth’s the peer of
her?
The modest face, the gentle grace, the humor and the cheer of
ber—
Eyes like the summer skies when twin stars beam above in
them,
Oh! proud will be the boy that’s to light the lamp of love in
them.
Céad mile fáilte they ll give you down at Donovans, &c,
1 Céad mile fdilte, a a hundred thousand welcomes,
$ Cannawaun, 8 Cailin deas, pretty girl.
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1133
Then when you rise to go, it’s “Ah, then, now sit down
again!”
“ Tsn’t it the haste you ’re in?” and “ Won’t you soon come
round again?”
Your caubeen and your overcoat you 'd better put astray from
them,
T will take you all your time to try and tear yourself away
from them.
Céad mile fáilte they ’ll give you down at Donovans, &c.
IRISH MOLLY 0.
Oh! fairer than the lily tall, and sweeter than the rose,
As modest as the violet in dewy dell that blows;
With heart as warm as summer noon, and pure as winter
- 8now—
The pride of Erin’s isle is she, dear Irish Molly O!
No linnet of the hazel grove than she more sweetly sang,
No sorrow could be resting where her guileless ‘laughter rang,
No hall of light could half so bright as that poor cabin glow
Where shone the face of love and grace of Irish Molly O!
But fever’s breath struck down in death her father strong and
brave,
And who should now his little ones from want and sorrow save?
“Oh, never fear, my mother dear, across the seas III go,
And win for ye a new home there,” said Irish Molly O!
And far away ’mid strangers cold she toiled for many a year,
And no one heard the heart-wrung sigh or saw the silent tear,
But letters fond the seas beyond would kind and constant go,
With gold won dear, and words of cheer, from Irish Molly O!
And one by one she sent for all the loved ones o’er the foam,
And one by one she welcomed them to her fond heart and home,
And last and best her arms caressed the aged head of snow—
“Oh, mother, we’ll be happy now!” said Irish Molly O!
Alas! long years of toil and tears had chilled her young heart’s
glow,
And grief and care had blanched her hair and stilled her pulse’s
flow,
And when the spring bade wild birds sing and buds in beauty
blow—
They made your grave where willows wave, poor Irish Molly O!
1134 IRISH LITERATURE.
THE OULD PLAID SHAWL.
Not far from old Kinvara, in the merry month of May,
When birds were singing cheerily, there came across my way,
As if from out the sky above an angel chanced to fall,
A little Irish cailín in an ould plaid shawl.
She tripped along right joyously, a basket on her arm;
And, oh! her face, and, oh! her grace, the soul of saint would
charm;
Her brown hair rippled o’er her brow, but greatest charm of all
Was her modest blue eyes beaming ’neath her ould plaid shawl.
I courteously saluted her—“ God save you, miss,” says I;
“God save you kindly, sir,” said she, and shyly passed me by;
Off went my heart along with her, a captive in her thrall,
Imprisoned in the corner of her ould plaid shawl.
Enchanted with her beauty rare, I gazed in pure delight,
Till round an angle of the road she vanished from my sight;
But ever since I sighing say, as I that scene recall,
“The grace of God about you and your ould plaid shawl.”
I’ve heard of highway robbers that, with pistols and with
knives,
Make trembling travelers yield them up their money or their
lives,
But think of me that handed out my heart and head and all
To a simple little cailin in an ould plaid shawl!
Oh! graceful the mantillas that the signorinas wear,
And tasteful are the bonnets of Parisian ladies fair,
But never cloak or hood or robe, in palace, bow’r, or hall,
Clad half such witching beauty as that ould plaid shawl.
Oh! some men sigh for riches, and some men live for fame,
And some on history’s pages hope to win a glorious name;
My aims are not ambitious, and my wishes are but small—
You might wrap them all together in an ould plaid shawl.
Ill seek her all through Galway, and II seek her all through
Clare,
Ill search for tale or tidings of my traveler everywhere,
For peace of mind Ill never find until my own I call
That little Irish cailin in her ould plaid shawl.
FRANCIS A. FAHY. 1135
LITTLE MARY CASSIDY.
Oh, ’t is little Mary Cassidy ’s the cause of all my misery,
The raison that 1 am not now the boy I used to be;
Oh, she bates the beauties all that we read about in history,
Sure half the country side’s as lost for her as me.
Travel Ireland up and down, hill, village, vale, and town,
Girl like my colleen dhown you ’ll be looking for in vain.
Oh, I'd rather live in poverty with little Mary Cassidy,
Than Emperor without her be o’er Germany or Spain.
?T was at the dance at Darmody’s that first I caught a sight of
her,
And heard her sing the Drinan Donn, till tears came in my
eyes,
And ever since that blessé¢d hour I’m dreaming day and night
of her;
The divil a wink of sleep at all I get from bed to rise.
Cheeks like the rose in June, song like the lark in tune,
Working, resting, night or noon, she never leaves my mind;
Oh, till singing by my cabin fire sits little Mary Cassidy,
°T is little aise or happiness I ’m sure 1 II ever find.
What ie wealth, what is fame, what is all that people fight
about,
To a kind word from her lips or a love-glance from her eye?
Oh, though troubles throng my breast, sure they ’d soon go to
the right-about
If I thought the curly head of her would rest there by and by.
Take all I own to-day, kith, kin, and care away,
Ship them all across the say, or to the frozen zone;
Lave me an orphan bare—but lave me Mary Cassidy,
I never would feel lonely with the two of us alone.
1136 IRISH LITERATURE.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES OF IRELAND.
ANONYMOUS.
Following is a small selection from the vast and rich store of
Anonymous Fairy and Folk Tales which have been current for cen-
turies in Ireland. A much larger number of these stories is to be
found elsewhere in this Library under the names of the authors
who have written them down from traditional story-tellers and
others, and who have published collections of them, from the time
of Thomas Crofton Croker down to the present day.—[Ep.
WILL O’ THE WISP.
From ‘ Hibernian Tales,’ a Chap-book,
In old times there was one Will Cooper, a blacksmith
who lived in the parish of Loughile; he was a great lover of
the bottle, and all that he could make by his trade went to
that use, so that his family was often in a starving condi-
tion. One day as he was musing in his shop alone after a
fit of drunkenness, there came to him a little old man, al-
most naked and trembling with cold. “My good fellow,”
said he to Will, “ put on some coals and make a fire, that I
may get myself warmed.”
Will, pitying the poor creature, did so, and likewise
brought him something to eat, and told him, if he thought
proper, he was welcome to stay all night. The old man
thanked him kindly, and said he had farther to go; “ but,”
says he, “ as you have been so kind to me, it is in my power
to make you a recompense; make three wishes,” says he,
“for anything you desire most, and let it be what it
will, you shall obtain it immediately.” “Well,” says Will,
“since that is the case, I wish that any person who takes
my sledge into their hand may never get free of it till I
please to take it from them. Secondly, I have an armed
chair, and I wish that any person sitting down on the same
may never have power to rise until I please to take them off
it. I likewise wish for the last,” says Will, “that what-
ever money or gold I happen to put into my purse, no per-
son may have power to take it out again but myself.”
“ Ah! unfortunate Will!” cries the old man, “ why did not
you wish for Heaven?”
AIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1137
With that he went away from the shop, as Will thought,
very pensive and melancholy, and never was heard of
more. The old man’s words opened Will’s eyes; he saw it
was in his power to do well had he made a good use of the
opportunity, and when he considered that the wishes were
not of the least use to him, he became worse every day,
both in soul and body, and in a short time he was reduced
to great poverty and distress.
One idle day as he was walking along through the fields
he met the devil in the appearance of a gentleman, who
told him if he would go along with him at the end of seven
years, he should have anything he desired during that
time. Will, thinking that it was as bad with him as it
could be, although he suspected it was the devil, for the
love of rising in the world, made bargain to go with him
at the end of the seven years, and requested that he would
supply him with plenty of money for the present. Accord-
ingly, Will had his desire, and dreading to be observed by
his neighbors to get rich on a sudden, he removed to a
distance from where he was then living. However, there
was nobody in distress or in want of money but Will was
always ready to relieve, insomuch that in a short time he
became noted, and went in that country by the name of
Bill Money, in regard of the great sums he could always
command. He then began to build houses, and before
the seven years were expired he had built a town, which,
in imitation of the name he then had, was called Bally-
money, and is to this day. However, to disguise the busi-
ness, and that nobody might suspect him having any deal-
ings with Satan, he still did something now and then at
his trade.
The seven years being expired, he was making some arti-
cle for a friend, when the devil came into the shop in his
former appearance. “ Well, Will,” says he, “are you ready
to go with me now?” “Iam,” says Will, “if I had the job
finished; take that sledge,” says he, “and give me a blow
or two, for it is a friend that is to get it, and then I will
go with you where you please.” The devil took the sledge,
and they soon finished the job. “Now,” says Will, “stay
you here till I run to my friend with this, and I will not
stay a minute.” Will then went out and the devil stopped
in the shop till it was near night, but there was no sign
R
1138 IRISH LITERATURE.
of Will coming near him, nor could he by any means get
the sledge out of his hands. He thought if he was once
in his old abode, perhaps there might be some of the smith
trade in it who would disengage him of the sledge, but all
that were in hell could not get it out of his hands, so he had
to retain the shape he was then in as long as the iron re
mained in his hand. The devil, seeing he could get nobody
to do anything for him, went in search of Will once more,
but somehow or other he could not get near him for a
month.
At length he met him coming out of a tavern, pretty
drunk. “ Well, Will,” says he, “that was a pretty trick
you put on me!” “Faith, no,” says Will, “it was you
that tricked me, for when I came back to the shop you were
away, and stole my sledge with you, so that I could not
get a job done ever since.” “ Well, Will,” says Satan, “I
could not help taking the sledge, for I cannot get it out of
my hand; but if you take it from me I will give you seven
years more before I ask you with me.” Will readily took
the sledge, and the devil parted from him well pleased that
he had got rid of it. Will having now seven years to play
upon, roved about through the town of Ballymoney, drink-
ing and sporting, and sometimes doing a little at his trade
to blindfold the people; yet there was many suspected he
had dealings with Satan, or he could not do half of what he
had done.
At length the seven years were expired, and the devil
came for him and found him sitting at the fire smoking,
in his own house, where he kept his wonderful chair.
“Come, Will,” says he, “are you ready to go with me
now?” “Tam,” says Will, “if you sit down a little till I
make my will and settle everything among my family, and
then I will go with you wherever you please.” So, setting
the arm-chair to Satan, he sat down, and Will went into
the chamber as if to settle his affairs; after a little he
came up again, bidding the devil come along, for he had all
things completed to his mind, and would ask to stay no
longer. When Will went out the devil made an attempt
to rise, but in vain; he could not stir from the chair, nor
even make the least motion one way or other, so he was as
much confounded to think what was the matter, as when he
was first cast into utter darkness. Will, knowing what
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1139
would occur to Satan, stayed away a month, during which
time he never became visible in the chair "to any of the
family, nor do we hear that any one else ever observed him
at any time but Will himself. However, at the month’s
end Will, returning, pretended to be very much surprised
that the “devil did not follow him. “ What,” says Will,
“ kept you here all this time? I believe you are making
a fool of me; but if you do not come immediately I will
have the bargain broken, and never go with you again.”
“T cannot help it,” says Satan, “for all I can do I cannot
stir from my seat, but if you could liberate me I will give
you seven years more before I call on you again.” “ Well,”
says Will, “I will do what Ican.” He then went to Satan
and took him by the arm, and with the greatest ease lifted
him out of the chair and set him at liberty once more.
No sooner was Satan gone than Will was ready for his
old trade again; he sported and played, and drank of
the best, his purse never failing, although he sunk all the
property and income he had in and about Ballymoney long
before; but he did not care, for he knew he could have
recourse to the purse that never would fail, as I told you
before. However, an accident happened the same purse,
that a penny would never stay in it afterwards, and Will
became one of the poorest men to be found. This was at
the end of the seven years of his last bargain, when Satan
came in quest of him again, but was so fearful of a new
trick put upon him by Will that he durst not come near the
house. At length he met him in the fields, and would not
give him time to bid as much as farewell to his wife and
children, he was so much afraid of being imposed upon.
Will had at last to go, and traveling along the road he
came to an inn, where many a good glass he had taken in
his time. “Here’s a set of the best rogues,” says Will,
“in Ireland; they cheated me many a time, and I will give
all I possess could I put a trick upon them.” . . . “ Well,”
says Satan, “I do not care if we stop.” “ But,” says Will,
“T have no money, and I cannot manage my scheme with-
out it; but I will tell you what you can do—you can change
yourself into a piece of gold; I will put you in my purse,
and then you will see what a hand I will make for you and
me both, before we are at our journey’s end.” Satan, ever
willing to promote evil, consented to change himself into
1140 IRISH LITERATURE.
gold, and when he had done so, Will put the piece into his
purse and returned home.
Satan, understanding that Will did not do as he pre
tended, strove to deliver himself from confinement, but
by the power of the purse he could never change himself
from gold, as long as Will pleased to keep him in it, and no
other person, as I have told you before, had power to take
anything out of it but himself. Will would go to drink
from one ale-house to another, and would pretend to be
drunk when he was not, where he would lay down his purse
and bid the waiters take what they pleased for the reckon-
ing. Every person saw he had money plenty, yet all they
could do they could never get one penny out of the purse,
and he would get so drunk when they would give it back
to him that he would not seem to understand anything,
and so would sneak away. In this manner he cheated
both town and country round, until Satan, weary of ‘con-
finement, had recourse to a stratagem of his own, and
changed himself from pieces of gold into a solid bar or
ingot of the same metal, but could not get out of the purse.
This, however, put a great damp upon Will’s trade, for
when he had no coin to show he could get nothing from
anybody, and how to behave he did not know. He took a
notion that he would perhaps force him into coin again,
and accordingly brought him to an iron forge, where he had
the ingot battered, for the length of an hour, at a fearful
rate; but all they could do they never changed it in the
least, neither could they injure the purse, for the quality
of it became miraculous after his wish, and the people
swore the devil was surely in the purse, for they never saw
anything like it. They were compelled at last to give
over, and Will returned home and went to bed, putting the
purse under his head. His wife was asleep, and the devil
kept such a hissing, puffing, and blowing under the bolster
that he soon awakened her, and she, almost frightened out
of her wits, awakened Will, telling him that the devil was
under his head. “ Well, if he be,” says Will, “I will take
him to the forge, where I assure you he will get a sound
battering.” “Oh, no,” says Satan, “I would rather be in
hell than stay here confined in this manner, and if you
let me go I will never trouble you again.” “ With all my
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1141
heart,” says Will; “on that head you shall have your free-
dom,” and opening the purse, gave Satan his liberty.
Will was now free from all dread or fear of anything,
and cared not what he did. But I forgot to mention that
at the time Will wished nobody might take anything out
of the purse, he wished he might never put his hand in it
himself but he would find money—but after Satan being in’
it he found it empty ever after. By this unlucky accident,
he that had seen so much of the world for such a length of
time was reduced to the most indigent state, and at length
forced to beg his bread. In this miserable condition he
spent many years until his glass was run, and he had to pay
that debt to nature which all creatures have since the fall
of Adam. However, his life was so ill-spent and his actions
so bad that it is recorded he could get no entrance to any
place of good after his decease, so that he was destined to
follow his own master.
Coming to the gates of hell, he made a horrible noise to
get in; then Satan bid the porter ask who it was that made
such a din, and not to admit him till he would let him
know. The porter did so, and he bade him tell his master
that he was his old friend, Will Cooper, wanting to come
to him once more. When Satan had heard who it was he
ordered the gates to be strongly guarded; “for if that
villain gets in,” says he, “we are all undone” Will
pleaded the distress he was in, that he could not get back-
ward nor forward with the darkness he was surrounded
with, and having lost his guide, if Satan would not let him
in; and being loath to listen to the noise and confusion he
was making at the gate, Satan sent one of his servants
to conduct him back to earth again, and particularly not
to quit him until he left him in Ireland.
“ Now,” says Satan to Will when he was going away,
“you were a trusty servant to me a long time; now you
are going to earth again, let me see you be busy, and gain
all to me that you can; but remember how you served me
when in the purse, and you shall never be out of darkness.
I will give you a light in your hand to allure and deceive
the weary traveler, so that he may become a prey to us.”
So lighting a wisp, he gave it to Will, and he was con-
ducted to earth, where he wanders from that day to this,
under the title of Will o’ the Wisp.
1142 IRISH LITERATURE.
LOUGHLEAGH (LAKE OF HEALING).
From the ‘ Dublin and London Magazine,’ 1825.
“Do you see that bit of a lake,” said my companion,
turning his eyes towards the acclivity that overhung
*Loughleagh. “ Troth, and as little as you think of it, and
as ugly as it looks with its weeds and its flags, it is the most
famous one in all Ireland. Young and ould, rich and
poor, far and near, have come to that lake to get cured
of all kinds of scurvy and sores. The Lord keep us our
limbs whole and sound, for it’s a sorrowful thing not to
have the use o’ them. *T was but last week we had a
great grand Frenchman here; and, though he came upon
crutches, faith he went home sound as a bell; and well
he paid Billy Reily for curing him.”
“ And, pray, how did Billy Reily cure him?”
“Oh, well enough. He took his long pole, dipped it
down to the bottom of the lake, and brought up on the
top of it as much plaster as would do for a thousand
sores!” '
“ What kind of plaster? ”
“ What kind of plaster? why, black plaster to be sure;
for isn’t the bottom of the lake filled with a kind of black
mud which cures all the world?”
“Then it ought to be a famous lake indeed.”
“ Famous, and so it is,” replied my companion, “ but it
isn’t for its cures neather that it is famous; for, sure,
doesn’t all the ‘world know there is a fine beautiful city at
the bottom of it, where the good people live just like
Christians? Troth, it is the truth I tell you; for Shemus-
a-sneidh saw it all when he followed his dun cow that was
stolen.”
“ Who stole her?”
“TIl tell you all about it:—Shemus was a poor gossoon,
who lived on the brow of the hill, in a cabin with his ould
mother. They lived by hook and by crook, one way and
another, in the best way they could. They had a bit of
ground that gave 'em the preaty, and a little dun cow that
gave ’em the drop o’ milk; and, considering how times go,
they weren’t badly off, for Shemus was a handy gossoon
to boot; and, while minden the cow, cut heath and made
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1143
brooms, which his mother sould on a market-day, and
brought home the bit o” tobaccy, the grain of salt, and other
“nic-nackenes, which a poor body can’t well do widout.
Once upon a time, however, Shemus went farther than
usual up the mountain, looken for long heath, for town’s-
people don’t like to stoop, and so like long handles to their
brooms. The little dun cow was a’most as cunning as a
Christian sinner, and followed Shemus like a lap-dog every-
where he’d go, so that she required little or no herden.
On this day she found nice picken on a round spot as green
as a leek; and, as poor Shemus was weary, as a body would
be on a fine summer s day, he lay down on the grass to rest
himself, just as we’re resten ourselves on the cairn here.
Begad, he hadn’t long lain there, sure enough, when, what
should he see but whole loads of ganconers? dancing about
the place. Some o’ them were hurlen, some kicking a
football, and others leaping a kick-step-and-a-lep. They
were go soople and so active that Shemus was highly de-
lighted with the sport, and a little tanned-skinned chap in
a red cap pleased him better than any o’ them, bekase he
used to tumble the other fellows like mushrooms. At one
time he had kept the ball up for as good as half-an-hour,
when Shemus cried out, ‘Well done, my hurler!’ The
word wasn’t well out of his mouth when whap went the
ball on his eye, and flash went the fire. Poor Shemus
thought he was blind, and roared out, ‘ Mille murdher!’?
but the only thing he heard was a loud laugh. ‘Cross 0’
Christ about us,’ says he to himself, ‘what is this for?’
and afther rubbing his eyes they came to a little, and he
could see the sun and the sky, and, by-and-by, he could see
everything but his cow and the mischievous ganconers.
They were gone to their rath or mote; but where was the
little dun cow? He looked, and he looked, and he might
have looked from that day to this, bekase she wasn’t to be
found, and good reason why—the ganconers took her away
with ’em.
“Shemus-a-sneidh, however, didn’t think so, but ran
home to his mother.
“¢Where is the cow, Shemus?’ axed the ould woman.
1Ir, gean-canach, love talker, a kind of fairy appearing in lonesome
alleys, a.dueon (tohacco pipe) in his mouth, making love to milkmaids,
2 Mille murdher, & thousand murders.
1144 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Och, musha, bad luck to her,’ said Shemus, ‘I donna
where she is!’
“Ts that an answer, you big blaggard, for the likes 0”
you to give your poor ould mother?’ said she.
““ Och, musha,’ said Shemus, ‘don’t kick up saich a
bollhous' about nothing. The ould cow is safe enough, I II
be bail, some place or other, though I could find her if I
put my eyes upon kippeens, and, speaking of eyes, faith,
I had very good luck o’ my side, or I had naver a one to
look after her.’
“Why, what happened your eyes, agrah?’ axed the ould
woman.
“¢Oh! didn’t the ganconers—the Lord save us from all
hurt and harm!—drive their hurlen ball into them both!
and sure I was stone blind for an hour.’
“¢And may be,’ said the mother, ‘the good people took
our cow?”
“No, nor the devil a one of them,’ said Shemus, ‘ for,
by the powers, that same cow is as knowen as a lawyer,
and wouldn’t be such a fool as to go with the ganconers
while she could get such grass as I found for her to-day.’”
In this way, continued my informant, they talked about
the cow all that night, and next mornen both o’ them set
off to look for her. After searching every place, high and
low, what should Shemus see sticking out of a bog-hole but
something very like the horns of his little beast!
“Oh, mother, mother,” said he, “I ’ve found her!”
“Where, alanna?” axed the ould woman.
“In the bog-hole, mother,” answered Shemus.
At this the poor ould creathure set up such a pullallue
that she brought the seven parishes about her; and the
neighbors soon pulled the cow out of the bog-hole. You’d
swear it was the same, and yet it wasn’t, as you shall hear
by-and-by.
Shemus and his mother brought the dead beast home
with them; and, after skinnen her, hung the meat up in
the chimney. The loss of the drop o’ milk was a sorrowful
thing, and though they had a good deal of meat, that
couldn't last always; besides, the whole parish faughed*
upon them for eating the flesh of a beast that died with-
out bleeden. But the pretty thing was, they couldn’t eat
1Bollhous, rumpus, —$ Faughed, despised.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1145
the meat after all, for when it was boiled it was as tough
as carrion, and as black as a turf. You might as well
think of sinking your teeth in an oak plank as into a piece
of it, and then you’d want to sit a great piece from the
wall for fear of knocking your head against it when pulling
it through your teeth. At last and at long run they were
forced to throw it to the dogs, but the dogs wouldn’t smell
to it, and so it was thrown into the ditch, where it rotted.
This misfortune cost poor Shemus many a salt tear, for he
was now obliged to work twice as hard as before, and be
out cutten heath on the mountain late and early. One day
he was passing by this cairn with a load of brooms on his
back, when what should he see but the little dun cow and
two red-headed fellows herding her.
“That ’s my mother’s cow,” said Shemus-a-sneidh.
“No, it is not,” said one of the chaps.
“ But I say it is,” said Shemus, throwing the brooms on
the ground, and seizing the cow by the horns. At that the
red fellows drove her as fast as they could to this steep
place, and with one leap she bounced over, with Shemus
stuck fast to her horns. They made only one splash in the
lough, when the waters closed over ’em, and they sunk to
the bottom. Just as Shemus-a-sneidh thought that all was
over with him, he found himself before a most elegant
palace built with jewels, and all manner of fine stones.
Though his eyes were dazzled with the splendor of the
place, faith he had gomsh? enough not to let go his holt,
but in spite of all they could do, he held his little cow by
the horns. . He was axed into the palace, but wouldn't go.
The hubbub at last grew so great that the door flew open,
and out walked a hundred ladies and gentlemen, as fine as
any in the land.
“What does this boy want?” axed one o’ them, who
seemed to be the masther.
“T want my mother’s cow,” said Shemus.
“That ’s not your mother’s cow,” said the gentleman.
“ Bethershin! ”? cried Shemus-a-sneidh; “don’t I know
her as well as I know my right hand?”
“Where did you lose her?” axed the gentleman. And
go Shemus up and told him all about it: how he was on
3 Gomsh, otherwise “' gumption "— é.e., sense, cuteness.
$ B'édir sin, “ that is possible.”
1146 IRISH LITERATURE.
the mountain—how he saw the good people hurlen—how
the ball was knocked in his eye, and his cow was lost.
“I believe you are right,” said the gentleman, pulling
out his purse, “and here is the price of twenty cows for
you.”
“No, no,” said Shemus, “you ’ll not catch ould birds
wid chaff. I'll have my cow and nothen else.”
“ You re a funny fellow,” said the gentleman; “stop
here and live in a palace.”
“I'd rather live with my mother.”
“Foolish boy!” said the gentleman; “stop here and
live in a palace.”
“ I'd rather live in my mother’s cabin.”
“Here you can walk through gardens loaded with fruit
and flowers.”
“I'd rather,” said Shemus, “be cutting heath on the
mountains.”
“ Here you can eat and drink of the best.”
“Since I’ve got my cow, I can have milk once more with
the praties.”
“Oh!” cried the ladies, gathering round him, “ sure you
wouldn’t take away the cow that gives us milk for our
tea?”
“Oh!” said Shemus, “my mother wants milk as bad as
any one, and she must have it; so there is no use in your
palaver—I must have my cow.”
At this they all gathered about him and offered him
bushels of gould, but he wouldn’t have anything but his
cow. Seeing him as obstinate as a mule, they began to
thump and beat him; but still he held fast by the horns,
till at length a great blast of wind blew him out of the
place, and in a moment he found himself and the cow
standing on the side of the lake, the water of which looked
as if iú hadn't been disturbed since Adam was a boy—and
that ’s a long time since.
Well, Shemus-a-sneidh drove home his cow, and right
glad his mother was to see her; but the moment she said
“God bless the beast,” she sunk down like the breesha' of
a turf rick. That was the end of Shemus-a-sneidh’s dun
cow.
“ And, sure,” continued my companion, standing up, “ it
1 Briseadh, breaking.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1147
is now time for me to look after my brown cow, and God
send the ganconers haven’t taken her!”
Of this I assured him there could be no fear; and so
we parted.
DONALD AND HIS NEIGHBORS.
From ‘ Hibernian Tales,’ a Chap-book.
Hudden and Dudden and Donald O’Nery were near
neighbors in the barony of Balinconlig, and plowed with
three bullocks; but the two former, envying the present
prosperity of the latter, determined to kill his bullock, to
prevent his farm being properly cultivated and labored,
that going back in the world he might be induced to sell
his lands, which they meant to get possession of. Poor
Donald, finding his bullock killed, immediately skinned it,
and throwing the skin over his shoulder, with the fleshy
side out, set off to the next town with it, to dispose of it to
the best of his advantage. Going along the road a magpie
flew on the top of the hide and began picking it, chattering
all the time. The bird had been taught to speak and imi-
tate the human voice, and Donald, thinking he understood
some words it was saying, put round his hand and caught
hold of it. Having got possession of it, he put it under his
great-coat, and so went on to the town.
Having sold the hide, he went into an inn to take a dram,
and following the landlady into the cellar, he gave the
bird a squeeze which made it chatter some broken accents
that surprised her very much. “What is that I hear?”
said she to Donald; “I think it is talk, and yet I do not
understand.” “Indeed,” said Donald, “it is a bird I have
that tells me everything, and I always carry it with me to
know when there is any danger. Faith,” says he, “it
says you have far better liquor than you are giving me.”
“That is strange,’ said she, going to another cask of
better quality, and asking him if he would sell the bird.
“I will,” said Donald, “if I get enough for it.” “TI will
fill your hat with silver if you leave it with me.” Donald
was glad to hear the news, and taking the silver, set off,
rejoicing at his good luck.
1148 IRISH LITERATURE.
He had not been long at home until he met with Hudden
and Dudden. “ Mister,” said he, “ you thought you did me
a bad turn, but you could not have done me a better, for
look here what I have got for the hide,” showing them the
hatful of silver; “ you never saw such a demand for hides
in your life as there is at present.” Hudden and Dudden
that very night killed their bullocks, and set out the next
morning to sell their hides. On coming to the place they
went through all the merchants, but could only get a trifle
for them. At last they had to take what they could get,
and came home in a great rage, and vowing revenge on poor
Donald. He had a pretty good guess how matters would
turn out, and he being under the kitchen window, he was
afraid they would rob him, or perhaps kill him when asleep,
and on that account, when he was going to bed he left his
old mother in his place and lay down in her bed, which was
on the other side of the house; and taking the old woman
for Donald, they choked her in her bed, but he making
some noise they had to retreat and leave the money be
hind them, which grieved them very much.
However, by daybreak Donald got his mother on his
back and carried her to town. Stopping at a well, he fixed
his mother with her staff, as if she was stooping for a
drink, and then went into a public-house convenient and
called for a dram. “I wish,” said he to a woman that
stood near him, “you would tell my mother to come in;
she is at yon well trying to get a drink, and she is hard of
hearing. If she does not observe you, give her a little shake
and tell her that I want her.” The woman called her
several times, but she seemed to take no notice; at length
she went to her and shook her by the arm, but when she
let her go again, she tumbled on her head into the well,
and, as the woman thought, was drowned. She, in great
surprise and fear at the accident, told Donald what had
happened. “Oh, mercy,” said he, “what is this?” He
ran and pulled her out of the well, weeping and lamenting
all the time, and acting in such a manner that you would
imagine he had lost his senses. The woman, on the other
hand, was far worse than Donald, for his grief was only
feigned, but she imagined herself to be the cause of the old
woman’s death,
The inhabitants of the town, hearing what had happened,
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1149
agreed to make Donald up a good sum for his loss, as the
accident happened in their place; and Donald brought a
greater sum home with him than he got for the magpie.
They buried Donald’s mother, and as soon as he saw
Hudden and Dudden he showed them the last purse of
money he had got. “ You thought to kill me last night,”
said he, “ but it was good for me it happened on my mother,
for I got all that purse for her to make gunpowder.”
That very night Hudden and Dudden killed their moth-
ers, and the next morning set off with them to town.
On coming to the town with their burthen on their backs,
they went up and down crying, “ Who will buy old wives
for gunpowder?” so that every one laughed at them, and
the boys at last clodded them out of the place. They then
saw the cheat, and vowing revenge on Donald, buried the
old women, and set off in pursuit of him. Coming to his
house, they found him sitting at his breakfast, and seizing
him, put him in a sack, and went down to drown him in a
river at some distance.
As they were going along the highway they raised a
hare, which they saw had but three feet, and throwing off
the sack, ran after her, thinking by appearance she would
be easily taken. In their absence there came a drover that
way, and hearing Donald singing in the sack, wondered
greatly what could be the matter. “ What is the reason,”
said he, “ that you are singing, and you confined?” “Oh,
I am going to heaven,” said Donald, “and in a short time
I expect to be free from trouble.” “Oh, dear,” said the
drover, “ what will I give you if you let me to your place?”
“Indeed, I do not know,” said he; “it would take a good
sum.” “ I have not much money,” said the drover, “ but
I have twenty head of fine cattle, which I will give you to
exchange places with me.” “ Well,” says Donald, “I do
not care if I should; loose the sack, and I will come out.”
In a moment the drover liberated him and went into the
sack himself, and Donald drove home the fine heifers, and
left them in his pasture.
Hudden and Dudden having caught the hare, returned,
and getting the sack on one of their backs, carried Donald,
as they thought, to the river, and threw him in, where he
immediately sank. They then marched home, intending
to take immediate possession of Donald’s property; but
1150 IRISH LITERATURE.
how great was their surprise when they found him safe at
home before them, with such a fine herd of cattle, whereas
they knew he had none before. “Donald,” said they,
“ what is all this? We thought you were drowned, and yet
you are here before us.” “ Ah,” said he, “if I had but help
along with me when you threw me in, it would have been
the best job ever I met with, for of all the sight of cattle
and gold that ever was seen is there, and no one to own
them; but I was not able to manage more than what you
see, and I could show you the spot where you might get
hundreds.” They both swore they would be his friend, and
Donald accordingly led them to a very deep part of the
river, and lifted up a stone. “Now,” said he, “ watch
this,” throwing it into the stream; “ there is the very place,
and go in one of you first, and if you want help you have
nothing to do but call.” Hudden, jumping in and sinking
to the bottom, rose up again, and making a bubbling noise,
as those do that are drowning, attempted to speak, but
could not. “ What is that he is saying now?” says Dudden.
“ Faith,” says Donald, “he is calling for help; don’t you
hear him? Stand about,” said he, running back, “ till I
leap in. I know how to do better than any of you.” Dud-
den, to have the advantage of him, jumped in off the
bank, and was drowned along with Hudden. And this
was the end of Hudden and Dudden.
A QUEEN’S COUNTY WITCH.
From the ‘ Dublin University Review,’ 1839.
It was about eighty years ago, in the month of May, that
a Roman Catholic clergyman, near Rathdowney, in the
Queen’s County, was awakened at midnight to attend a
dying man in a distant part of the parish. The priest
obeyed without a murmur, and having performed his duty
to the expiring sinner, saw him depart this world before he
left the cabin. As it was yet dark, the man who had called
on the priest offered to accompany him home, but he re
fused, and set forward on his journey alone. The gray
dawn began to appear over the hills. The good priest was
highly enraptured with the beauty of the scene, and rode
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1151
on, now gazing intently at every surrounding object, and
again cutting with his whip at the bats and big beautiful
night-fiies which flitted ever and anon from hedge to hedge
across his lonely way. Thus engaged, he journeyed on
slowly, until the nearer approach of sunrise began to render
objects completely discernible, when he dismounted from
his horse, and slipping his arm out of the rein, and draw-
ing forth his “ Breviary ” from his pocket, he commenced
reading his “ morning office” as he walked leisurely along.
He had not proceeded very far, when he observed his
horse, a very spirited animal, endeavoring to stop on the
road, and gazing intently into a field on one side of the
way where there were three or four cows grazing. How-
ever, he did not pay any particular attention to this cir-
cumstance, but went on a little farther, when the horse
suddenly plunged with great violence, and endeavored to
break away by force. The priest with great difficulty suc-
ceeded in restraining him, and, looking at him more closely,
observed him shaking from head to foot, and sweating pro-
fusely. He now stood calmly, and refused to move from
where he was, nor could threats or entreaty induce him to
proceed. The father was greatly astonished, but recollect-
ing to have often heard of horses laboring under affright
being induced to go by blindfolding them, he took out his
handkerchief and tied it across his eyes. He then mounted,
and, striking him gently, he went forward without reluc-
tance, but still sweating and trembling violently. They
had not gone far, when they arrived opposite a narrow
path or bridle-way, flanked at either side by a tall, thick
hedge, which led from the high road to the field where the
cows were grazing. The priest happened by chance to
look into the lane, and saw a spectacle which made the
blood curdle in his veins. It was the legs of a man from
the hips downwards, without head or body, trotting up
the avenue at a smart pace. The good father was very
much alarmed, but, being a man of strong nerve, he re-
solved, come what might, to stand, and be further ac-
quainted with this singular specter. He accordingly stood,
and so did the headless apparition, as if afraid to approach
him.
The priest, observing this, pulled back a little from the
entrance of the avenue, and the phantom again resumed
1152 IRISH LITERATURE.
its progress. It soon arrived on the road, and the priest
now had sufficient opportunity to view it minutely. It
wore yellow buckskin breeches, tightly fastened at the
knees with green ribbon; it had neither shoes nor stock-
ings on, and its legs were covered with long, red hairs, and
all full of wet, blood, and clay, apparently contracted in
its progress through the thorny hedges. The priest, al-
though very much alarmed, felt eager to examine the phan-
tom, and for this purpose summoned all his philosophy to
enable him to speak to it. The ghost was now a little
ahead, pursuing its march at its usual brisk trot, and the
priest urged on his horse speedily urtil he came up with
it, and thus addressed it—
“ Hilloa, friend! who art thou, or whither art thou going
go early?”
The hideous specter made no reply, but uttered a fierce
and superhuman growl, or “ Umph.”
“A fine morning for ghosts to wander abroad,” again
said the priest.
Another “ Umph ” was the reply.
“ Why don’t you speak? ”
“ Umph.”
“You don’t seem disposed to be very loquacious this
morning.”
“ Umph,” again.
The good man began to feel irritated at the obstinate
silence of his unearthly visitor, and said, with some
warmth—
“In the name of all that’s sacred, I command you to
answer me, Who art thou, or where art thou traveling?”
Another “ Umph,” more loud and more angry than be-
fore, was the only reply.
“Perhaps,” said the father, “taste of whipcord might
render you a little more communicative; ” and so saying,
he struck the apparition a heavy blow with his whip on the
breech.
The phantom uttered a wild and unearthly yell, and fell
forward on the road, and what was the priest’s astonish-
ment when he perceived the whole place running over with
milk. He was struck dumb with amazement; the prostrate
phantom still continued to eject vast quantities of milk
from every part; the priest’s head swam, his eyes got dizzy;
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1153
a stupor came all over him for some minutes, and on his
recovering, the frightful specter had vanished, and in its
stead he found stretched on the road, and half drowned in
milk, the form of Sarah Kennedy, an old woman of the
neighborhood, who had been long notorious in that dis-
trict for her witchcraft and superstitious practices, and it
‘was now discovered that she had, by infernal aid, assumed
that monstrous shape, and was employed that morning in
sucking the cows of the village. Had a volcano burst forth
at his feet, he could not be more astonished; he gazed
awhile in silent amazement—the old woman groaning, and
writhing convulsively.
“Sarah,” said he, at length, “I have long admonished
you to repent of your evil ways, but you were deaf to my
entreaties; and now, wretched woman, you are surprised in
the midst of your crimes.”
“Oh, father, father,” shouted the unfortunate woman,
“can you do nothing to save me? I am lost; hell is open
for me, and legions of devils surround me this moment,
waiting to carry my soul to perdition.”
The priest had not power to reply; the old wretch’s pains
increased; her body swelled to an immense size; her eyes
flashed as if on fire, her face was black as night, her entire
form writhed in a thousand different contortions; her out-
cries were appalling, her face sunk, her eyes closed, and in
a few minutes she expired in the most exquisite tortures.
The priest departed homewards, and called at the next
cabin to give notice of the strange circumstances. The
remains of Sarah Kennedy were removed to her cabin,
situate at the edge of a small wood at a little distance.
She had long been a resident in that neighborhood, but
still she was a stranger, and came there no one knew from
whence. She had no relation in that country but one
daughter, now advanced in years, who resided with her.
She kept one cow, but sold more butter, it was said, than
any farmer in the parish, and it was generally suspected
that she acquired it by devilish agency, as she never made
a secret of being intimately acquainted with sorcery and
fairyism. She professed the Roman Catholic religion, but
never complied with the practices enjoined by that church,
and her remains were denied Christian sepulture, and were
buried in a sand-pit near her own cabin.
18
1154 IRISH LITERATURE.
On the evening of her burial, the villagers assembled and
burned her cabin to the earth. Her daughter made her
escape, and never after returned.
THE FAIRY GREYHOUND.
Paddy M’Dermid was one of the most rollicking boys in
the whole county of Kildare. Fair or pattern' wouldn't
be held barring he was in the midst of it. He was in every
place, like bad luck, and his poor little farm was seldom
sowed in season; and where he expected barley, there grew
nothing but weeds. Money became scarce in poor Paddy’s
pocket; and the cow went after the pig, until nearly all he
had was gone. Lucky however for him, if he had gomch
(sense) enough to mind it, he had a most beautiful dream
one night as he lay tossicated (drunk) in the Rath? of
Monogue, because he wasn’t able to come home. He dreamt
that, under the place where he lay, a pot of money was
buried since long before the memory of man. Paddy kept
the dream to himself until the next night, when, taking a
spade and pickaxe, with a bottle of holy water, he went
to the Rath, and, having made a circle round the place,
commenced diggin’ sure enough, for the bare life and sowl
of him, thinkin’ that he was made for ever and ever. He
had sunk about twice the depth of his knees, when whack
the pickaxe struck against a flag, and at the same time
Paddy heard something breathe quite near him. He looked
up, and just fornent him there sat on his haunches a
comely looking greyhound.
“God save you,” said Paddy, every hair in his head
standing up as straight as a sally twig.
“Save you kindly,” answered the greyhound—leaving
out God, the beast, bekase he was the divil. Christ defend
us from ever seeing the likes o’ him.
“Musha, Paddy M’Dermid,” said he, “ what would you
be looking after in that grave of a hole you’re diggin’
there?”
1 Pattern, a merry-making in the honor of some patron saint.
$ Ratha, little fields enclosed circular ditches. ‘hey are thought
to have been the sheep-folds and dwellings of an ancient people.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1155
“Faith, nothing at all, at all,” answered Paddy; bekase
you see he didn’t like the stranger.
é“ Arrah, be easy now, Paddy M’Dermid,” said the grey-
hound; “don’t I know very well what you are looking
for?”
“Why then in truth, if you do, I may as well tell you
at wonst, particularly as you seem a civil-looking gentle-
man, that’s not above speaking to a poor gossoon like my-
self.” (Paddy wanted to butter him up a bit.)
“ Well then,” said the greyhound, “ come out here and sit
down on this bank,” and Paddy, like a gomulagh (fool),
did as he was desired, but had hardly put his brogue out-
side of the circle made by the holy water, when the beast
of a hound set upon him, and drove him out of the Rath;
for Paddy was frightened, as well he might, at the fire that
flamed from his mouth. But next night he returned, full
sure the money was there. As before, he made a circle,
and touched the flag, when my gentleman, the greyhound,
appeared in the ould place.
“Oh ho,” said Paddy, “you are there, are you? but it
will be a long day, I promise you, before you trick me
again; ” and he made another stroke at the flag.
“Well, Paddy M’Dermid,” said the hound, “since you
will have money, you must; but say, how much will satisfy
you?”
Paddy scratched his coulaan,' and after a while said—
“ How much will your honor give me? ” for he thought it
better to be civil.
“ Just as much as you consider reasonable, Paddy M’Der-
mid.”
“Egad,” says Paddy to himself, “there’s nothing like
axin’ enough.”
“Say fifty thousand pounds,” said he. (He might as
well have said a hundred thousand, for I 11 be bail the
beast had money gulloure.)
“You shall have it,” said the hound; and then, after
trotting away a little bit, he came back with a crock full
of guineas between his paws.
“Come here and reckon them,” said he; but Paddy was
up to him, and refused to stir, so the crock was shoved
alongside the blessed and holy circle, and Paddy pulled it
3 Coulaan, head of hair, wig.
1156 IRISH LITERATURE.
in, right glad to have it in his clutches, and never stood
still until he reached his own home, where his guineas
turned into little bones, and his ould mother laughed at
him. Paddy now swore vengeance against the deceitful
beast of a greyhound, and went next night to the Rath
again, where, as before, he met Mr. Hound.
“ Bo you are here again, Paddy?” said he.
“Yes, you big blaggard,” said Paddy, “and I 1 never
leave this place until I pull out the pot of money that’s
buried here.”
“Oh, you won't,” said he. “Well, Paddy M’Dermid,
since I see you are such a brave venturesome fellow I ’ll be
after making you up if you walk downstairs with me out of
the could ”; and sure enough it was snowing like murder.
“ Oh may I never see Athy if I do,” returned Paddy, “ for
you only want to be loading me with ould bones, or per-
haps breaking my own, which would be just as bad.”
“Pon honor,” said the hound, “I am your friend; and
so don’t stand in your own light; come with me and your
fortune is made. Remain where you are and you “II die a
beggar-man.” So bedad, with one palaver and another,
Paddy consented ; and in the middle of the Rath opened up
a beautiful staircase, down which they walked; and after
winding and turning they came to a house much finer than
the Duke of Leinster’s, in which all the tables and chairs
were solid gold. Paddy was delighted; and after sitting
down, a fine lady handed him a glass of something to
drink; but he had hardly swallowed a spoonful when all
around set up a horrid yell, and those who before appeared
beautiful now looked like what they were—enraged “ good
people” (fairies).
Before Paddy could bless himself, they seized him, legs
and arms, carried him out to a great high hill that stood
like a wall over a river, and flung him down. “ Murder!”
cried Paddy; but it was no use, no use; he fell upon 4
rock, and lay there as dead until next morning, where some
people found him in the trench that surrounds the mote of
Coulhall, the “good people” having carried him there;
and from that hour to the day of his death he was the
greatest object in the world. He walked double, and had
his mouth (God bless us!) where his ear should be.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1157
THE COUNTESS KATHLEEN O’SHEA.
From a London-Irish newspaper.
A very long time ago, there suddenly appeared in old
Ireland two unknown merchants of whom nobody had ever
heard, and who nevertheless spoke the language of the
country with the greatest perfection. Their locks were
black, and bound round with gold, and théir garments were
of rare magnificence.
Both seemed of like age; they appeared to be men of fifty,
for their foreheads were wrinkled and their beards tinged
with gray.
In the hostelry where the pompous traders alighted it
was sought to penetrate their designs; but in vain—they
led a silent and retired life. And whilst they stopped
there, they did nothing but count over and over again out
of their money-bags pieces of gold, whose yellow brightness
could be seen through the windows of their lodging.
“Gentlemen,” said the landlady one day, “ how is it that
you are so rich, and that, being able to succor the public
misery, you do no good works?”
“Fair hostess,” replied one of them, “we didn’t like to
present alms to the honest poor, in dread we might be de-
ceived by make-believe paupers. Let want knock at our
door, we shall open it.”
The following day, when the rumor spread that two rich
strangers had come, ready to lavish their gold, a crowd be-
sieged their dwelling; but the figures of those who came
out were widely different. Some carried pride in their
mien; others were shame-faced.
The two chapmen traded in souls for the demon. The
soul of the aged was worth twenty pieces of gold, not a
penny more; for Satan had had time to make his valuation.
The soul of a matron was valued at fifty, when she was
handsome, and a hundred when she was ugly. The soul of
a young maiden fetched an extravagant sum; the freshest
and purest flowers are the dearest.
At that time there lived in the city an angel of beauty,
the Countess Kathleen O’Shea. She was the idol of the
people and the providence of the indigent. As soon as
she learned that these miscreants profited by the public
1158 IRISH LITERATURE.
misery to steal away hearts from God, she called to her
butler.
“ Patrick,” said she to him, “ how many pieces of gold in
my coffers? ”
“ A hundred thousand.”
“ How many jewels?”
“The money’s worth of the gold.”
“ How much property in castles, forests, and lands?”
“ Double the rest.”
“Very well, Patrick; sell all that is not gold; and bring
me the account. I only wish to keep this mansion and the
demesne that surrounds it.”
Two days afterwards the orders of the pious Kathleen
were executed, and the treasure was distributed to the poor
in proportion to their wants. This, says the tradition, did
not suit the purposes of the Evil Spirit, who found no more
souls to purchase. Aided by an infamous servant, they
penetrated into the retreat of the noble dame, and pur-
loined from her the rest of her treasure. In vain she strug-
gled with all her strength to save the contents of her cof-
fers; the diabolical thieves were the stronger. If Kathleen
had been able to make the sign of the Cross, adds tlie
legend, she would have put them to flight, but her hands
were captive. The larceny was effected.
Then the poor called for aid to the plundered Kathleen,
alas, to no good: she was able to succor their misery no
longer; she had to abandon them to the temptation.
Meanwhile, but eight days had to pass before the grain
and provender would arrive in abundance from the western
lands. Eight such days were an age. Eight days required
an immense sum to relieve the exigencies of the dearth, and
the poor should either perish in the agonies of hunger, or,
denying the holy maxims of the Gospel, vend, for base
lucre, their souls, the richest gift from the bounteous hand
of the Almighty. And Kathleen hadn’t anything, for she
had given up her mansion to the unhappy. She passed
twelve hours in tears and mourning, rending her sun-tinted
hair, and bruising her breast, of the whiteness of the lily;
afterwards she stood up, resolute, animated by a vivid sen-
timent of despair.
She went to the traders in souls.
“What do you want? ” they said.
“You buy souls?”
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1159,
“Yes, a few still, in spite of you. Isn’t that so, saint,
with the eyes of sapphire? ”
“To-day I am come to offer you a bargain,” replied she.
“ What?”
“T have a soul to sell, but it is costly.”
“ What does that signify if it is precious? The soul, like
the diamond, is appraised by its transparency.”
“It is mine.”
The two emissaries of Satan started. Their claws were
clutched under their gloves of leather; their gray eyes
sparkled; the soul, pure, spotless, virginal of Kathleen—it
was a priceless acquisition!
“ Beauteous lady, how much do you ask?”
“A hundred and fifty thousand pieces of gold.”
“It’s at your service,” replied the traders, and they
tendered Kathleen a parchment sealed with black, which
she signed with a shudder.
The sum was counted out to her.
As soon as she got home she said to the butler, “ Here,
distribute this: with this money that I give you the poor
can tide over the eight days that remain, and not one of
their souls will be delivered to the demon.”
Afterwards she shut herself up in her room, and gave
orders that none should disturb her.
Three days passed; she called nobody, she did not come
out.
When the door was opened, they found her cold and
stiff; she was dead of grief.
But the sale of this soul, so adorable in its charity, was
declared null by the Lord; for she had saved her fellow-
citizens from eternal death.
After the eight days had passed, numerous vessels
brought into famished Ireland immense provisions in
grain. Hunger was no longer possible. As to the traders,
they disappeared from their hotel without any one knowing
what became of them. But the fishermen of the Black-
water pretend that they are enchained in a subterranean
prison by order of Lucifer, until they shall be able to ren-
der up the soul of Kathleen, which escaped from them.
1160 IRISH LITERATURE.
RENT-DAY.
“Oh, ullagone! ullagone! this is a wide world, but what
will we do in it, or where will we go?” muttered Bill
Doody, as he sat on a rock by the Lake of Killarney.
“What will we do? To-morrow’s rent-day, and Tim the
Driver swears if we don’t pay our rent, he’ll cant every
ha’perth we have; and then, sure enough, there ’s Judy and
myself, and the poor gravls, will be turned out to starve
on the high-road, for the never a halfpenny of rent have I!
—Oh hone, that ever I should live to see this day! ”
Thus did Bill Doody bemoan his hard fate, pouring his”
sorrows to the reckless waves of the most beautiful of
lakes, which seemed to mock his misery as they rejoiced
beneath the cloudless sky of a May morning. That lake,
glittering in sunshine, sprinkled with fairy isles of rock
and verdure, and bounded by giant hills of ever-varying
hues, might, with its magic beauty, charm all sadness but
despair ; for alas,
“How ill the scene that offers rest
And heart that cannot rest agree!”
Yet Bill Doody was not so desolate as he supposed ; there
was one listening to him he little thought of, and help was
at hand from a quarter he could not have expected.
“What 'g the matter with you, my poor man?” said a
tall, portly-looking gentleman, at the same time stepping
out of a furze-brake. Now Bill was seated on a rock that
commanded the view of a large field. Nothing in the field
could be concealed from him, except this furze-brake, which
grew in a hollow near the margin of the lake. He was,
therefore, not a little surprised at the gentleman’s sudden
appearance, and began to question whether the personage
before him belonged to this world or not. He, however,
soon mustered courage sufficient to tell him how his crops
had failed, how some bad member had charmed away his
butter, and how Tim the Driver threatened to turn him out
of the farm if he didn’t pay up every penny of the rent by
twelve o’clock next day.
“A sad story, indeed,” said the stranger ; “ but surely, if
1 Grauls, children.
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1161
you represented the case to your landlord’s agent, he won’t
have the heart to turn you out.”
“ Heart, your honor; where would an agent get a heart!”
exclaimed Bill. “I see your honor does not know him;
besides, he has an eye on the farm this long time for a
fosterer of his own; so I expect no mercy at all at all, only
to be turned out.”
“ Take this, my poor fellow, take this,” said the stranger,
pouring a purse full of gold into Bill’s old hat, which in
his grief he had flung on the ground. “Pay the fellow
your rent, but I 1 take care it shall do him no good. I
remember the time when things went otherwise in this
country, when I would have hung up such a fellow in the
twinkling of an eye!”
These words were lost upon Bill, who was insensible to
everything but the sight of the gold, and before he could
unfix his gaze, and lift up his head to pour out his hundred
thousand blessings, the stranger was gone. The bewildered
peasant looked around in search of his benefactor, and at
last he thought he saw him riding on a white horse a long
way off on the lake.
“ O'Donoghue, O'Donoghue!” shouted Bill; “ the good,
the blessed O’Donoghue!” and he ran capering like a
madman to show Judy the gold, and to rejoice her heart
with the prospect of wealth and happiness.
The next day Bill proceeded to the agent’s; not sneak-
ingly, with his hat in his hand, his eyes fixed on the ground,
and his knees bending under him; but bold and upright,
like a man conscious of his independence.
“Why don’t you take off your hat, fellow? don’t you
know you are speaking to a magistrate? ” said the agent.
“I know I’m not speaking to the king, sir,” said Bill;
“and I never takes off my hat but to them I can respect
and love. The Eye that sees all knows I ’ve no right either
to respect or love an agent!”
“You scoundrel!” retorted the man in office, biting his
lips with rage at such an unusual and unexpected opposi-
tion, “ I 11 teach you how to be insolent again; I have the
power, remember.”
“To the cost of the country, I know you have,” said Bill,
who still remained with his head as firmly covered as if he
was the Lord Kingsale himself.
1162 IRISH LITERATURE.
“But, come,” said the magistrate; “have you got the
money for me? this is rent-day. If there’s one penny of it
wanting, or the running gale that’s due, prepare to turn
out before night, for you shall not remain another hour in
possession.”
“here is your rent,” said Bill, with an unmoved ex-
pression of tone and countenance; “you’d better count
it, and give me a receipt in full for the running gale and
all.”
The agent gave a look of amazement at the gold; for it
was gold—real guineas! and not bits of dirty ragged small
notes, that are only fit to light one’s pipe with. However
willing the agent may have been to ruin, as he thought, the
unfortunate tenant, he took up the gold, and handed the
receipt to Bill, who strutted off with it as proud as a cat of
her whiskers.
The agent, going to his desk shortly after, was con-
founded at beholding a heap of gingerbread cakes instead
of the money he had deposited there. He raved and swore,
but all to no purpose; the gold had become gingerbread
cakes, just marked like the guineas, with the king’s head;
and Bill had the receipt in his pocket; so he saw there was
no use in saying anything about the affair, as he would
only get laughed at for his pains.
From that hour Bill Doody grew rich; all his under-
takings pro. pered; and he often blesses the day that he met
with O’Donoghue, the great prince that lives down under
the lake of Killarney.
CONVERSION OF KING LAOGHAIRE’S
DAUGHTERS.
Once when Patrick and his clericks were sitting beside a
well in the Rath of Croghan, with books open on their
knees, they saw coming towards them the two young
daughters of the King of Connaught. ’T was early morn-
ing, and they were going to the well to bathe.
The young girls said to Patrick, “ Whence are ye, and
whence come ye?” and Patrick answered, “ It were better
for you to confess to the true God than to inquire concern-
ing our race.”
FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 1163
“Who is God?” said the young girls, “and where is
God, and of what nature is God, and where is His dwelling-
place? Has your God sons and daughters, gold and silver?
Is he everlasting? Is he beautiful? Did Mary foster her
son? Are His daughters dear and beauteous to men of
the world? Is He in heaven, or on earth, in the sea, in
rivers, in mountainous places, in valleys?”
Patrick answered them, and made known who God was,
and they believed and were baptized, and a white garment
put upon their heads; and Patrick asked them would they
live on, or would they die and behold the face of Christ?
They chose death, and died immediately, and were buried
near the well Clebach.
GEORGE FARQUHAR.
(1678—1707.)
Grorcr Farqunar, the actor-author, was born in Londonderry in
1678, and there he received the rudiments of education. In 1694 he
entered at Trinity College in Dublin, but was not graduated. He
became intimate with the actor Wilks, and went on the stage in
1695. His appearance was successful, and he would doubtless have
remained an actor all his life, but he accidentally wounded a brother
actor in a fencing-scene. He then left the stage and secured a com-
mission in the army through the Earl of Orrery.
He afterward went to London, renewed his acquaintance with
Wilks, and wrote his first comedy, ‘Love and a Bottle.’ This ap-
peared in 1698 and was well received. In 1700, the year of jubilee
at Rome, he produced his ‘Constant Couple; or, Trip to the Jubi-
lee,’ in which Wilks made a great hit as Sir Harry Wildair.
In 1702 he published his ‘ Miscellanies; or, Collections of Poems,
Letters, and ys,’ in which may be found many humorous and
pleasant sallies of fancy; and in 1708 he produced ‘ The Inconstant,’
a play which has ever since kept the stage.
‘The Stage Coach,’ a farce, was produced in 1704 and was well
received. In 1705 his comedy ‘The Twin Rivals’ appeared, and
in 1706 the comedy called ‘The Recruiting Officer.’ His last and
rhaps his best known work was ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem,’ which
e did not live to see produced. Financial troubles broke him down
completely, and in April, 1707, while ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem’ was
being rehearsed at Drury Lane, he sank into his last sleep.
After his death the following letter to Wilks was found among
his papers : ‘‘ Dear Bob, I have not anything to leave thee to perpet-
uate my memory but two helpless girls; look upon them sometimes,
and think of him that was to the last moment of his life, thine,
George Farquhar.”
Farquhar has been called ‘‘one in the shining list of geniuses
that adorn the biographical of Ireland, his style is pure and
unaffected, his wit natural and flowing, his plots generally well con-
trived.” His works were so successful in book form, as well as on
the stage, that within fifty years of his death they had gone through
more than eight editions. ‘‘ Farquhar’s gentlemen are Irish gentle-
men,” says Cowden Clarke, ‘‘ frank, generous, eloquent, witty, and
with a cordial word of gallantry always at command.” Hazlitt had
a high opinion of Farquhar, who, he says, ‘‘ has humor, character,
and invention. . . . His incidents su one another with rapidity.
but without premeditation ; his wit is easy and spontaneous ; his
style animated, unembarrassed and flowing ; his characters full of
life and spirit.”
1164
GEORGE FARQUHAR. 1165
THE COUNTERFEIT FOOTMAN.
From ‘ The Beaux’ Stratagem.’
Scrus, a Footman, and ARCHER, a Supposed Footman.
Enter MR8. SULLEN and DORINDA.
(They walk to the opposite side. Mrs. Sullen drops
her fan; Archer runs, takes it up, and gives it to
her.)
Archer. Madam, your ladyship’s fan.
Mrs, Sullen. Ob, sir, I thank you. What a handsome
bow the fellow made!
Dorinda. Bow! Why, I have known several footmen
come down from London, set up here as dancing-masters,
and carry off the best fortunes in the country.
Archer. (Aside.) That project, for aught I know, had
been better than ours. Brother Scrub, why don’t you in-
troduce me?
Scrub. Ladies, this is the strange gentleman’s servant,
that you saw at church to-day; I understand he came from
London, and so I invited him to the cellar, that he might
show me the newest flourish in whetting my knives.
Dorinda. And I hope you have made much of him.
Archer. Oh, yes, madam; but the strength of your lady-
ship’s liquor is a little too potent for the constitution of
your humble servant.
Mrs. Sullen. What! then you don’t usually drink ale?
Archer. No, madam; my constant drink is tea, or a little
wine and water: ’t is prescribed me by the physicians, for
a remedy against the spleen.
Scrub. Oh, la! Oh, la! A footman have the spleen!
Mrs. Sullen. I thought that distemper had been only
proper to people of quality.
Archer. Madam, like all other fashions it wears out, and
so descends to their servants; though, in a great many of
us, I believe, it proceeds from some melancholy particles
in the blood, occasioned by the stagnation of wages.
Dorinda, How affectedly the fellow talks! How long,
pray, have you served your present master?
Archer. Not long; my life has been mostly spent in the
service of the ladies.
1166 IRISH LITERATURE.
Mrs. Sullen. And, pray, which service do you like best?
Archer. Madam, the ladies pay best; the honor of serv-
ing them is sufficient wages; there is a charm in their looks
that delivers a pleasure with their commands, and gives
our duty the wings of inclination.
Mrs. Sullen. That flight was above the pitch of a livery:
and, sir, would you not be satisfied to serve a lady again?
Archer. As groom of the chamber, madam, but not as a
footman.
Mrs. Sullen. I suppose you served as footman before?
Archer. For that reason, I would not serve in that post
again; for my memory is too weak for the load of messages
that the ladies lay upon their servants in London. My
Lady Howd’ye, the last mistress I served, called me up one
morning, and told me, “ Martin, go to my Lady Allnight,
with my humble service; tell her I was to wait on her lady-
ship yesterday, and left word with Mrs. Rebecca, that the
preliminaries of the affair she knows of are stopped, till
we know the concurrence of the person I know of, for
which there are circumstances wanting, which we shall
accommodate at the old place; but that, in the meantime,
there is a person about her ladyship, that, from several
hints and surmises, was accessory at a certain time to the
disappointments that naturally attend things, that to her
knowledge are of more importance—
Mrs. Sullen and Dorinda. Ha, ha! Where are you go-
ing, sir?
Archer. Why, I haven’t half done.
Scrub. I should not remember a quarter of it.
Archer. The whole howd’ye was about half an hour
long; I happened to misplace two syllables, and was turned
off, and rendered incapable—
Dorinda. The pleasantest fellow, sister, I ever saw.
But, friend, if your master be married, I presume you still
serve a lady?
Archer. No, madam; I take care never to come into a
married family; the commands of the master and mistress
are always so contrary that ’t is impossible to please both.
Dorinda. There’s a main point gained. My lord is not
married, I find.
Mrs. Sullen. But I wonder, friend, that in so many good
services you had not a better provision made for you.
GEORGE FARQUHAR. 1167
Archer. I don’t know how, madam; I am very well as I
am.
Mrs. Sullen. Something for a pair of gloves.
(Offering him money.)
Archer. I humbly beg leave to be excused. My master,
madam, pays me; nor dare I take money from any other
hand without injuring his honor and disobeying his com-
mands.
Scrub. Brother Martin! brother Martin!
Archer. What do you say, brother Scrub?
Scrub. Take the money and give it to me.
(Eveunt Archer and Scrub.)
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON.
(1810—1886.)
“Str SAMUEL FERGUSON, poet and antiquary, the third son of John
Ferguson of Collon House, County Antrim, was born in Belfast,
March 10, 1810. He was educated at the chief public school of Bel-
fast, the Academical Institution, and thence proceeded to Trinity
College, Dublin, where he was graduated B.A. 1826 and M.A. 1832,
and was created LL.D. honoris caused in 1864. In 1838 he was
called to the Irish bar, and obtained some practice on the northeast
circuit of Ireland. In 1859 he was made a Queen’s counsel, but in
1867 he retired from practice on his appointment as a deputy keeper
of the public records of Ireland. He was the first holder of the
office, which entailed much investigation and arrangement of docu-
ments.
‘* Just before Ferguson’s appointment one of the chief officials in
charge of the records had publicly stated that the Irish statutes
to the reign of Queen Anne were in Norman French, a language
never used in Ireland after 1495, so little were the keepers acquainted
with the records they kept. He thoroughly organized the de
ment, and on March 17, 1878, was knighted in recognition of his
services,
“From its first appearance in 1838 he was a contributor to The
Dublin University Magazine, In it he published in 1834 an English
metrical version of the ‘ Address of O’Byrne’s Bard to the Clans of
Wicklow,’ ‘The Lament over the Ruins of Timoleague Abbey,’
‘The Fair Hills of Ireland,’ and ‘ Forester's Complaint,’ 1836, ‘The
Fairy Thorn,’ and ‘ Willy Gilliland.’ At tlie same period he pub-
lished a series of tales in which verse is sometimes mingled with
prose, called ‘ Hibernian Nights’ Entertainments.’ These stories have
been edited by Lady Ferguson since their author’s death, and were
published in London in 1887, together with a reprint of his first
volume of collected ‘Poems’ and the ‘Remains of St. Patrick,’ a
translation into English blank verse of the ‘ Confessio’ and ‘ Epistle
to Coroticcus,’ with a dissertation on the life of the saint. He wrote
two political satires, ‘ Inheritor and Economist’ and ‘ Dublin.’
“Other poems were published by him in Blackwood's Magazine,
of which the best known is ‘The Forging of the Anchor.’ ‘The
‘Wet Wooing’ was published in the same magazine in 1832, and in
May, 1838, his amusing satirical dialogue, illustrative of the Irish
educational schemes then prominent, ‘Father Tom and the Pope.’
This has been reprinted with other contributions of his in ‘Tales
from Blackwood.’ In 1865 he published a volume of collected poems,
‘Lays of the Western Gael’; in 1872 ‘ Congal,’ an epic poem in five
books ; in 1880 a third volume of ‘ Poems,’ chiefly on subjects taken
from Irish literature. Besides the contents of these three volumes
a few separate poems of Ferguson's are in print. ‘The Elegy on
the Death of Thomas Davis’ appeared in the ‘Ballad Poetry of
Ireland,’ while the witty song ef ‘The Loyal Orangemen’ was
. i
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON
After a photograph by Chancellor, Duotn
datizeaty Google
le
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1169
never published, though privately circulated and often recited in
Dublin. Besides these numerous contributions to literature, he .
wrote many essays on Irish antiquities, and carried on lengthy in-
vestigations in several parts of Ireland. In 1882 he was unani-
mously elected President of the Royal Irish Academy.
s““He married, Aug. 16, 1848, Mary Catharine Guinness, and for
many years he and his wife practiced an open, generous, delightful
hospitality toward every one in Dublin who cared' for literature,
music, or art, at their house in North Great George’s Street. He
died, after an illness of some months, at Strand Lodge, Howth, in
the county of Dublin, on Aug. 9, 1886. After a public funeral
service in St. Patrick's Cathedral, his body was conveyed to his
family burying-place at Donegore, County Antrim.
““ Ag an antiquarian Ferguson’s most important work was his col-
lection of all the known Ogham inscriptions of Ireland and their
publication (‘Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland,’
edited by Lady Ferguson, Edinburgh, 1887). He was laborious and
accurate, and nearly all he wrote on antiquarian subjects deserves
careful study.
““ Ag a poet he deserves recollection in Ireland, for he strove hard
to create modern poetry from the old Irish tales of heroes and saints,
and history of places. Another Irish poet has maintained that the
epic poem ‘Congal ’ entitles Ferguson to live in Ireland as the
national poet, and his long metrical versions of Irish sagas are
praised by Miss M. Stokes and by Judge O'Hagan.
“He was not perfectly acquainted with the Irish language, and
perhaps this accounts for the fact that, while sometimes giving the
stories more beauties than he takes away, he misses something of
the reality of ancient life, and seems to talic of ashadowy scene and
not of the real deeds of men and women. Several of the poems of
his own experiences are admirable, and will probably have a per-
manent popularity in Ireland. ‘The Elegy on Thomas Davis,’
‘Willy Gilliland,’ and the ‘ Lines on the Liffey in Mesgedra,’ are not
faultless, but they are beautiful poems with a true Irish air. His
antiquarian knowledge, his literary ability and attainments, made
Ferguson's conversation delightful, while his high character and
generous disposition endeared him to a large circle of friends.”
Thus far we quote from Mr. Norman Moore, in ‘ The Dictionary
of National Biography.’
. Alfred P. Graves, in ‘A Treasury of Irish Poetry,’ says:
“Omitting living writers, of whom it is too early to speak with
confidence, Ferguson was unquestionably the Irish poet of the past
century who has most powerfully influenced the literary history of
his country. It was in his writings that the great work of restor-
ing to Ireland the spiritual treasure it had lost in parting with the
Gaelic tongue was decisively begun.”
Mr. Aubrey de Vere observes: ‘Its qualities are those character-
istic of the noble, not the ignoble poetry—viz., passion, imagination,
vigor, an epic largeness of conception, wide human sympathies,
vivid and truthful description—while with them it unites none of the
vulgar stimulants for exhausted or morbid poetic appetite, whether
the epicurean seasoning, the skeptical, or the revolutionary.”
74
1170 IRISH LITERATURE.
Professor Dowden, writing to Ferguson on the subject of his ‘ Con-
gal,’ says: ‘‘ What seems to me most noteworthy in your poems is
the union of culture with simplicity and strength. Their refinement
is large and strong, not curious and diseased; and they have spaces
and movements which give one a feeling like the sea or the air ona
headland. I had not meant to say anything of ‘ Congal,’ but some-
how this came and said itself.” And Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote: ‘‘ The
author of these poems is the greatest tt Ireland has produced,
because the most central and most Celtic. Whatever the future
may bring forth in the way of a truly great and national literature—
and now that the race is so large, so widely spread, and so conscious
of its unity, the years are ripe—will find its morning in these three
volumes of one who was made by the purifying flame of national
sentiment the one man of his time who wrote heroic poetry—one
who, among the somewhat sybaritic singers of his day, was like
some aged sea-king sitting among the inland wheat and poppies—
the savor of the sea about him and its strength.”
FERGUSON’S SPEECH ON ROBERT BURNS.
From ‘ Mr. Samuel Ferguson—Ireland of His Day.’
My Lord Mayor, Mr. Parker, and gentlemen, in calling
upon me, on this occasion, you do me an honor, which I
prize the more because I am hardly worthy of it; yet I may,
without vanity, acknowledge that on this occasion, when
you celebrate the memory of the great Scottish poet in the
metropolis of Ireland, there is a certain propriety in your
devolving that honorable task on one like me, who, al-
though by the nativity of many generations an Irishman,
am yet by lineage and descent a Scot. Six generations
and more have passed since the district of Antrim, in which
my infant ears first became familiar with the accents of
Galloway, was peopled from that region which has since be-
come famous as the land of Burns. Time has but slightly
altered the Scottish accent on our lips; and saving our
duty to our own country, our hearts still turn with pride
and affection to that noble land, whose sons to-day through-
out the civilized world offer tribute of a national homage
to the great poet of Scotland. Such a homage has not been
paid to any man of letters of modern times. Yet it is not
in the extent merely of these demonstrations—although
they embrace the whole circle of the globe, wherever
Scotchmen have penetrated in the pursuit of duty, of fame,
or of fortune—that we find the magnitude and the marvel
- SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1171
of the praise that you bestow upon him. It is in the char-
acter of the nation that bestows it, and that of the man to
whose memory the tribute is offered, that we discern the
greatness and the worthiness of your praise. A nation,
eager, and eminently successful in the pursuit of practical
objects, proverbially prudent, habituated to a rigorous self-
control, selects for the object of its reverence—not a man
like Bentham, or like Franklin,—not a divine, a philoso-
pher, or an economist, but a child of impulse and of pas-
sion—a proud, an improvident, an unworldly man.
How comes this? By what spell is it that you are thus
drawn together in hundreds and thousands, from rising to
the setting of the sun, to swell the tribute of honor to the
memory of this man with a contagious fervor which draws
into the vortex of your own enthusiasm the sister capi-
tals, and all the provincial towns in the United Kingdom?
Whence comes it, asks the unobservant and thoughtless
mind, that you should select for your highest honors a man
apparently so dissimilar to yourselves? The answer to the
inquiry—the spell that brings you together—lies in the
depth of your own character. It is the old poetic fervor of
your race, that faculty which lies at the basis of all enter-
prise and all fortune, although not discerned by those who
merely view the surface of the Scottish character, which
recognizes in the poet—in the man of fervid soul—the
true representative of the character of the Scot in its high-
est and best aspect. Therefore it is that you have well and
wisely chosen a poet as the representative of your race and
of your nation, a poet who commands the admiration of
mankind, a poet who has given utterance to the best sen-
timents of love, of tenderness, of generosity, of patriotism,
and of piety—to the most charming humor and the bright-
est wit, in numbers perfectly melodious, and in language
which, notwithstanding its dialectic peculiarities, is pre-
eminently manly, direct, and intelligible. The sentiments
belong to the world. The dialect and the poet are your
own.
When it pleased God to ordain that the languages of
mankind should be different, He left the hearts the same;
and that speech which most directly stirs in the breast of
man the common sympathies of our nature is the truest
classic : and when we find that those sympathies are evoked
1172 IRISH LITERATURE.
by language harmonious in its composition and melodious
in its rhythmical arrangement, where rhyme reinforces
time, and sense falls in with both, and emotion culminates
at every turning-point of the composition, then, by the com-
mon consent of mankind, we acknowledge ourselves in the
presence and the power of the poet; whether he speaks the
language of Attica or of Ayrshire. This is the true test
of poetic power, that it stirs the hearts of men deeply and
widely by the direct agency of simple and intelligible lan-
guage. Tried by this test, the poetry of Burns justifies the
unexampled honors that to-day are paid to his memory.
His poems have the breadth, the simplicity, the ease, and
the force of operations of nature. And this is the charac
teristic of the poetry of the Augustan age of every school
of literature, and these demonstrations of yours to-day will
do more than all the criticisms of the reviews and maga-
zines to recall our writers from that profitless search after
recondite thought and curious felicities of expressions
which of late in our literature have become too much the
fashion, and in which the careful observers of the progress
of the literature of older nations might well apprehend the
approaching decay of letters in our own, if the tendency of
our favorite writers to abandon the ancient models of sim-
plicity and manliness be not arrested by such demonstra-
tions as ours to-day.
If these meetings have no other effect than to warn our
men of letters that the lasting praises of the generations
are not to be obtained by intricate, conceited, and curious
compositions, they would confer a boon on literature, and
aid in maintaining the standard of taste. But, gentlemen,
they have a wider, deeper significance. Men will not forget
their nationalities—men will not lay down the ties of birth
and of kindred at the chair of any science or of any quasi-
science. We must be Scotchmen, we must be Irishmen, and
we will honor the memories of the men whose genius has
asserted and won for us our own places for ourselves in the
temple of British fame. Honor, then, in full measure,
heaped and overflowing, to the heaven-born peasant who
has borne the harp of his country so high in that temple,
that if it be placed a little below the lyre of Shakespeare,
it is still so near that if you make the chords of one vi-
brate, those of the other will thrill in harmony, and who,
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1173
having achieved that position for the lyrical genius of his
country, could say with the modest nobility of a truly
manly nature, “I have been bred to the plow, and I am
independent.” Well was it for Burns that he was bred to
the plow—that he spent the days of his dawning genius
in familiarity with nature, and not amongst the fine ladies
and fine gentlemen whose neglect of him has been deplored
as a misfortune, but truly was a happy escape for him and
for us all. Burns was not ashamed that he was born a
son of toil. Why should he? All the pursuits of industry
are honorable, especially those of the tiller of the soil.
The hands of heroes have been familiar with the plow.
Ulysses, the wisest of Homeric worthies, did not blush to
confess his prowess in the fields. When reproached with
idleness by one of the proud suitors of Penelope, you may
remember the noble spirit in which, associating the toils
of the husbandman with the glories of the soldier, he re-
plied—
“ Forbear, Eurymachus; for were we matched
In work against each other, thou and I
Mowing in spring-time, when the days are long ;
Or if again it were our task to drive
Yoked oxen in the plow ; and were the field
In size four acres ; with a glebe through which
The share might smoothly glide: then shouldst thou see
How straight my furrow should be cut and true.
Or if Saturnian Jove should now excite
Here battle, or eleewhere ; and were I armed
‘With two bright spears, and with a shield, and bore
A brazen casque well fitted to my brows :
Me then thou shouldst behold mingling in fight
Among the foremost chiefs, nor with the crime
Of idle beggary shouldst reproach me more.”
Ulysses, gentlemen, did not conceive that skill in the
manual labors of-the field detracted in aught from his
position as a prince and chieftain; nor in the case of Burns
has it detracted one tittle from his pre-eminence as a leader
among the intellects of his country. Let no regrets mingle
with your festive offerings to his memory. No one with
truth can say his life was unhappy. As toil is incident to
the eating of daily bread, despondency is incident to the
poetic temperament; and he could not have had that keen
enjoyment of existence had he not sometimes suffered those
1174 IRISH LITERATURE.
fits of despondency which are inseparable from the poetic
temperament. He who enjoyed in a measure so exalted the
raptures of love, the delights of friendship, the enchant-
ment of the fancy—no one can affirm that such a man was
unhappy. Neither let the libation you pour to his memory
be dashed by any bitter thought of supposed neglect or in-
gratitude in his country. Gentlemen, that is not so. Much
as Burns has done for Scotland, Scotland, before Burns
was born, had done more for him.
He was born the child of a proud, of a renowned and
glorious country. For him, as for all the genius of future
time, Wallace had made the banks of Irvine holy ground—
for him Bruce shook his Carrick spear—for him, as for
every child of genius that the soil of Scotland should pro-
duce to the end of time, the genius of Scottish music had
made the hills and valleys of his country vocal with melo-
dies soliciting to song—for him courageous-hearted ances-
tors, brave and pious men, had fought and bled—had
watched and prayed on mountain and on moor—had
offered up the sacrifice of their blood for Scotland’s reli-
gious freedom,—that the cottier on his Saturday even
might be free to open his big hall Bible by his own hearth-
stone, and that amid scenes of patriarchal simplicity,
piety, and virtue, of manly self-reliance, and bold self-asser-
tion, the young germ of genius might unfold itself in
safety. Let no man, therefore, say that Scotland had not
done her part. No, she has not been wanting. She is no
unworthy mother of her noble son. In honoring him you
honor her and yourselves. With full hearts, then, and with
consciences discharged of all feeling of breach of duty to-
wards the man whose memory we are met to celebrate, let
us drain this bumper toast to the memory of Robert Burns.
THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR.
Come, see the Dolphin’s anchor forged; ’t is at a white heat
now:
The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; tho’ on the forge’s
brow
The little flames still fitfully play thro’ the sable mound;
And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1175
All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare;
Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass
there.
The windlass strains the tackle chains, the black mound heaves
below;
And red and deep, a hundred veins burst out at every throe:
It rises, roars, rends all outright—O, Vulcan, what a glow!
?T is blinding white, ’t is blasting bright; the high sun shines
not so!
The high sun sees not, on the earth, such flery fearful show;
The roof ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy lurid row
Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the
foe;
As, quivering thro’ his fleece of flame, the sailing monster,
slow
Sinks on the anvil—all about, the faces fiery glow—
“ Hurrah!” they shout, “leap out—leap out; ” bang, bang, the
sledges go:
Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low;
A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow;
The leathern mail rebounds the hail; the rattling cinders strow
The ground around; at every bound the sweltering fountains
flow,
And thick and loud the swinking crowd at every stroke pant
“hot”
Leap out, leap out, my masters; leap out and lay on load!
Let’s forge a goodly anchor—a bower thick and broad;
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode;
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road—
The low reef roaring on her lee—the roll of ocean poured
From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board;
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the
chains!
But courage still, brave mariners—the Bower yet remains,
And not an inch to flinch he deigns, save when ye pitch sky
high,
Then, moves his head, as tho’ he said, “ Fear nothing—here am
Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time;
Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple’s chime;
But, while ye sling your sledges, sing—and let the burden be,
The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we!
Strike in, strike in—the sparks begin to dull their rustling red;
1176 IRISH LITERATURE.
Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be
sped;
Our anchor soon must change its bed of fiery rich array,
For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay;
Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here,
For the yeo-heave-o’, and the heave-away, and the sighing sea-
man’s cheer ;
When, weighing slow at eve they go—far, far from love and
home;
And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o’er the ocean foam.
In livid and obdurate gloom he darkens down at last;
A shapely one he is, and strong. as e’er from cat was cast.—
O trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me,
What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep green
sea!
O deep-sea Diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
The hoary-monster’s palaces! methinks what joy ’t were now
To go plumb plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,
And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging
tails!
Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea unicorn,
And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn;
To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn;
And for the ghastly grinning shark to laugh his jaws to
scorn :—
To leap down on the kraken’s back, where ’mid Norwegian
isles
Tle lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallowed miles,
Till, snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls;
Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far astonished shoals
Of his back-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in a cove,
Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undiné love,
To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard-by icy lands,
To wrestle with the sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands.
o broad-armed Fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal
thine?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night ’t is thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play—
But shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave—
A fisher’s joy is to destroy—thine office is to save.
O lodger in the sea-king’s halls, couldst thou but understand
Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping
band,
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1177
Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend,
With sounds like breakers in a dream blessing their ancient
friend—
Oh, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps
round thee,
Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou ’dst leap within
the sea!
Give honor to their memories who left the pleasant strand,
To shed their blood so freely for the love of Fatherland—
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy church-yard
grave,
Bo freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave—
Oh, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honor him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!
LAMENT OVER THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY
OF TIMOLEAGUE.
Lone and weary as I wandered
By the bleak shore of the sea,
Meditating and reflecting
On the world’s hard destiny ;
Forth the moon and stars ’gan glimmer
In the quiet tide beneath,—
For on slumbering spray and blossom
Breathed not out of heaven a breath.
On I went in sad dejection,
Careless where my footsteps bore
Till a ruined church before me
Opened wide its ancient door,—
Till I stood before the portals,
Where of old were wont to be,
For the blind, the halt, and leper,
Alms and hospitality.
Still the ancient seat was standing
Built against the buttress gray
Where the clergy used to welcome
Weary travelers on their way.
1178
IRISH LITERATURE.
There I sat me down in sadness,
"Neath my cheek I placed my hand,
Till the tears fell hot and briny
Down upon the grassy land.
There, I said in woful sorrow,
Weeping bitterly the while,
Was a time when joy and gladness
Reigned within this ruined pile:—
Was a time when bells were tinkling,
Clergy preaching peace abroad,
Psalms a-singing, music ringing
Praises to the mighty God.
Empty aisle, deserted chancel,
Tower tottering to your fall,
Many a storm since then has beaten
On the gray head of your wall!
Many a bitter storm and tempest
Has your roof-tree turned away,
Since you first were formed a temple
To the Lord of night and day.
Holy house of ivied gables,
That wert once the country’s pride,
Houseless now in weary wandering
Roam your inmates far and wide.
Lone you are to-day, and dismal,—
Joyful psalms no more are heard
Where, within your choir, her vesper
Screeches the cat-headed bird.
lvy from your eaves is growing,
Nettles round your green hearth-stone,
Foxes howl, where, in your corners,
Dropping waters make their moan.
Where the lark to early matins
Used your clergy forth to call,
There! alas no tongue is stirring,
Save the daws’ upon the wall.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1179
Refectory cold and empty,
Dormitory bleak and bare,
Where are now your pious uses,
Simple bed and frugal fare?
Gone your abbot, rule, and order,
Broken down your altar stones;
Naught see I beneath your shelter
Save a heap of clayey bones.
Oh! the hardship, oh! the hatred,
Tyranny, and cruel war,
Persecution and oppression,
That have left you as you are!
I myself once also prospered ;—
Mine is, too, an altered plight.
Trouble, care, and age have left me
Good for naught but grief to-night.
Gone, my motion and my vigor,—
Gone, the use of eye and ear;
At my feet lie friends and children,
Powerless and corrupting here.
Woe is written on my visage
In a nut my heart would lie—
Death’s deliverance were welcome—
Father, let the old man die.
OWEN BAWN.
This refers to the rigid prohibition of the intermarriage with the
native Irish by William de Burghs, Earl of Ulster, in A.D. 1333,
which led to the Irish return from beyond the river Bawn and the
expulsion of the English from all Ulster.
My Owen Bawn’s hair is of thread of gold spun;
Of gold in the shadow, of light in the sun;
All curled in a coolun the bright tresses are—
They make his head radiant with beams like a star!
My Owen Bawn’s mantle is long and is wide,
To wrap me up safe from the storm by his side:
1180 IRISH LITERATURE.
And I’d rather face snowdrift, and winter-wind there,
Than lie among daisies and sunshine elsewhere.
My Owen Bawn Quinn is a bold fisherman,
He tracks the dun quarry with arrow and spear—
Where wild woods are waving, and deep waters flow,
Oh, there goes my love with the dun-dappled roe.
My Owen Bawn Quinn is a bard of the best,
He spears the strong salmon in midst of the Bann;
And rocked in the tempest on stormy Lough Neagh,
Draws up the red trout through the bursting of spray.
My Owen Bawn Quinn is a hunter of deer,
He wakes me with singing, he sings me to rest;
And the cruit! ’neath his fingers rings up with a sound,
As though angels harped o’er us, and fays underground.
They tell me the stranger has given command,
That crommeal? and coolun shall cease in the land,
That all our youths’ tresses of yellow be shorn,
And bonnets, instead, of a new fashion worn.
That mantles like Owen Bawn’s shield us no more,
That hunting and fishing henceforth we give o’er,
That the net and the arrow aside must be laid,
For hammer and trowel, and mattock and spade.
That the echoes of music must sleep in their caves,
That the slave must forget his own tongue for a slave’s,
That the sound of our lips must be strange in our ears,
And our bleeding hands toil in the dew of our tears.
Oh sweetheart and comfort! with thee by my side,
I could love and live happy, whatever betide;
But thou, in such bondage, wouldst die ere a day—
Away to Tir-oén, then, Owen, away!
There are wild woods and mountains, and streams deep and
clear,
There are loughs in Tir-o&n as lovely as here;
There are silver harps ringing in Yellow Hugh’s hall,
And a bower by the forest side, sweetest of all!
1Cruit,asmall harp. * Crommeal, mustache.
BIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1181
We will dwell by the sunshiny skirts of the brake,
Where the sycamore shadows glow deep in the lake;
And the snowy swan stirring the green shadows there,
Afloat on the water, seems floating in air.
Away to Tir-oén, then, Owen, away!
We will leave them the dust from our feet for a prey,
And our dwelling in ashes and flames for a spoil—
°T will be long ere they quench them with streams of the Foyle!
CASHEL OF MUNSTER.
IRISH RUSTIC BALLAD.
I’d wed you without herds, without money, or rich array,
And I’d wed you on a dewy morning at day-dawn gray;
My bitter woe it is, love, that we are not far away
In Cashel town, though the bare deal boards were our marriage-
bed this day.
Oh, fair maid, remember the green hillside;
Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide;
Time now has worn me; my locks are turned to gray,
The year’s scarce and I am poor, but send me not, love, away.
Oh, deem not my blood is of base strain, my girl,
Oh, deem not my birth was as the birth of the churl;
Marry me, and prove me, and say soon you will,
That noble blood is written on my right side still.
My purse holds no red gold, no coin of the silver white;
No herds are mine to drive through the long twilight!
But the pretty girl that would take me, all bare though I be,
and lone,
Oh, I’d take her with me kindly to the County Tyrone.
Oh, my girl, I can see ’t is in trouble you are,
And, oh, my girl, I see ’t is your people’s reproach you bear;
“Tam a girl in trouble for his sake with whom I fly,
And, oh, may no other maiden know such reproach as I!”
1182 IRISH LITERATURE.
MOLLY ASTHORE.
O Mary dear, O Mary fair,
O branch of generous stem,
White blossom of the banks of Nair,
Though lilies grow on them;
You ’ve left me sick at heart for love,
Bo faint I cannot see,
The candle swims the board above,
I’m drunk for love of thee.
O stately stem of maiden pride,
My woe it is and pain,
That I still severed from thy side
The long night must remain.
Through all the towns of Inisfail
I’ve wandered far and wide;
But from Downpatrick to Kinsale,
From Carlow to Kilbride,
’Mong lords and dames of high degree,
Where’er my feet have gone,
My Mary, one to equal thee
I’ve never looked upon;
I live in darkness and in doubt
Whene’er my love’s away,
But were the blessed sun put out,
Her shadow would make day.
?T is she indeed, young bud of bliss,
And gentle as she’s fair,
Though lily-white her bosom is,
And sunny-bright her hair,
And dewy-azure her blue eye,
And rosy-red her cheek,
Yet brighter she in modesty,
More beautifully meek ;
The world’s wise men from north to south
Can never cure my pain,
But one kiss from her honey mouth,
Would make me whole again.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1183
CEAN DUBH DEELISH.'!
Put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
O mouth of honey with the thyme for fragrance,
Who with heart in breast could deny you love?
O many and many a young girl for me is pining,
Letting her locks of gold to the cold winds free,
For me, the foremost of the gay young fellows,
But I’d leave a hundred, pure love, for thee.
Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
O mouth of honey with the thyme for fragrance,
Who with heart in breast could deny you love?
THE LAPFUL OF NUTS.
Whene’er I see soft hazel eyes,
And nut-brown curls,
I think of those bright days I spent
Among the Limerick girls;
When up through Cratla woods I went
Nutting with thee;
And we plucked the glossy, clustering fruit
From many a bending tree.
Beneath the hazel boughs we sat,
Thon, love, and I,
And the gathered nuts lay in thy lap,
Below thy downcast eye.
But little we thought of the store we’d won,
I, love, or thou,
For our hearts were full, and we dare not own
The love that’s spoken now.
O there’s wars for willing hearts in Spain,
And high Germanie!
And I'll come back, if I ever come back,
With knightly fame and fee,
1Cean dubh deelish, dear black head,
1184
IRISH LITERATURE.
And I’ll come back, if I ever come back,
Faithful to thee,
That sat, with thy white lap full of nuts,
Beneath the hazel-tree.
PASTHEEN FION.
From the Irish.
Oh, my fair Pastheen is my heart’s delight;
Her gay heart laughs in her blue eye bright;
Like the apple blossom her bosom white,
And her neck like the swan’s on a March morn bright!
Then, Oro, come with me! come with me! come with me!
Oro, come with me! brown girl, sweet!
And oh! I would go through snow and sleet
If you would come with me, my brown girl, sweet!
Love of my heart, my fair Pastheen!
Her cheeks are as red as the rose’s sheen,
But my lips have tasted no more, I ween,
Than the glass I drank to the health of my queen!
Then, Oro, come with me! come with me! ete,
Were I in the town, where’s mirth and glee,
Or ’twixt two barrels of barley bree,
With my fair Pastheen upon my knee,
*T is I would drink to her pleasantly!
Then, Oro, come with me! come with me! ete,
Nine nights I lay in longing and pain,
Betwixt two bushes, beneath the rain,
Thinking to see you, love, once again;
But whistle and call were all in vain!
Then, Oro, come with me! come with me! ete.
I'll leave my people, both friend and foe;
From all the girls in the world III go;
But from you, sweetheart, oh, never! oh, no!
Till I lie in the coffin stretched, cold and low!
Then, Oro, come with me! come with me! ete,
oaviesy Google
THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND
From a photograph of a scene in County Wicklow showing part of
Lough ben
“There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand,
And ber forest paths in summer are by falling waters fanned;
‘There is dew at high noontide there, and springs V' the yellow sand
On the Fair Hills of Holy Ireland.”
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1185
THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND.
From the Irish.
A very close translation, in the original meter, of an Irish song
of unknown authorship dating from the end of the seventeenth
century. The refrain means ‘0 sad lament.”
A plenteous place is Ireland for hospitable cheer,
Uileacán dubh 0!
Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley
ear, Uileacán dubh 0!
There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand,
And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fanned;
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i’ the yellow
sand
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.
Curled he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee,
Uileacán dubh 0!
Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea,
Uileacén dubh 0!
And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high com-
mand, .
For the fair hills of holy Ireland.
Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground,
Uileacén dubh 0!
The butter and the cream do wondrously abound,
Uileacán. dubh 0!
The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand,
And the cuckoo’s calling daily his note of music bland,
And the old thrush sings so bravely his song i’ the forests
gran
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.
LOOKING SEAWARD.
From ‘ Congal.”
He looking landward from the brow of some great sea-cape’s
head,
Bray or Ben-Edar—sees beneath, in silent pageant grand,
Slow fields of sunshine spread o’er fields of rich, corn-bearing
land;
“5
1186 IRISH LITERATURE.
Red glebe and meadow margin green commingling to the view
With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of
blue;
Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward, to the
verge
Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-
down surge,
Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low be
neath
Poised off the rock, ply underfoot; and, ’mid the blossoming
heath,
And mint, sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-aired, at ease
reclined,
Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling wind;
With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of
green,
Sun-strown, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening
squalls between,
And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound,
Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round;
And—haply, being a citizen just ’scaped from some disease
That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-freah
breeze,
Health-salted, bathes; and says, the while he breathes reviving
bliss,
“1 am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this!”
GRACE NUGENT.
From the Irish of O’Carolan.
Brightest blossom of the spring
Grace the sprightly girl I sing;
Grace who bore the palm of mind
From all the rest of womankind.
Whomsoe’er the fates decree,
Happy fate for life to be,
Day and night my coolun near,
Ache or pain need never fear.
Her neck outdoes the stately swan,
Her radiant face the summer dawn;
Happy thrice the youth for whom
The fates design that branch of bloom.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1187
Pleasant are thy words benign,
Rich those azure eyes of thine;
Ye who see my queen beware
Those twisted links of golden hair.
This is what I fain would say
To the bird-voiced lady gay—
Never yet conceived the heart,
Joy that grace could not impart,
Fold of jewels, case of pearls,
Coolun of the circling curls!
More I say not, but no less,
Drink your health and happiness,
MILD MABEL KELLY.
From the Irish of O’Carolan.
Whoever the youth who by Heaven’s decree
Has his happy right hand ’neath that bright head of thine,
?T is certain that he
From all sorrow is free,
Till the day of his death, if a life so divine
Should not raise him in bliss above mortal degree.
Mild Mabel Ni Kelly, bright coolun of curls!
All stately and pure as the swan on the lake.
Her mouth of white teeth is a palace of pearls,
And the youth of the land are love-sick for her sake.
No strain of the sweetest e’er heard in the land
That she knows not to sing, in a voice so enchanting,
That the cranes on the sand
Fall asleep where they stand.
Oh, for her blooms the rose, and the lily ne’er waiting
To shed its mild luster on bosom or hand.
The dewy blue blossom that hangs on the spray
More blue than her eyes human eye never saw.
Deceit never lurked in its beautiful ray.
Dear lady, I drink to you, slainte go bragh!?
To gaze on her beauty the young hunter lies
’Mong the branches that shadow her path in the grove.
But alas, if her eyes
The rash gazer surprise,
3 Slainte go bragh, your health for ever.
1188 IRISH LITERATURE.
All eyesight departs from the victim of love,
And the blind youth steals home with his heart full of sighs.
O, pride of the Gael of the lily-white palm!
O coolun of curls to the grass at your feet!
At the goal of delight and of honor I am
To boast such a theme for a song so unmeet.
THE COOLUN.
Translated from the Irish of Maurice Dugan or O’Dugan.
O had you seen the Coolun,
Walking down by the cuckoo’s street,
With the dew of the meadow shining
On her milk-white twinkling feet.
O my love she is, and my cailín óga
And she dwells in Bal’nagar;
And she bears the palm of beauty bright,
From the fairest that in Erin are.
In Balnagar is the Coolun,
Like the berry on the bough her cheek;
Bright beauty dwells for ever
On her fair neck and ringlets sleek;
O sweeter is her mouth’s soft music
Than the lark or thrush at dawn,
Or the blackbird in the greenwood singing
Farewell to the setting sun.
Rise up, my boy! make ready
My horse, for I forth would ride,
To follow the modest damsel,
Where she walks on the green hillside:
For e’er since our youth were we plighted,
In faith, troth, and wedlock true—
O she’s sweeter to me nine times over,
Than organ or cuckoo!
O ever since my childhood
I loved the fair and darling child;
| But our people came between us,
And with lucre our pure love defiled:
1 Anchúil-fhíonn, maiden of fair flowing locks, —$ Cailín óg, young girl.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1189
O my woe it is, and my bitter pain,
And I weep it night and day,
That the cailín bán of my early love
Is torn from my heart away.
Sweetheart and faithful treasure,
Be constant still, and true;
Nor for want of herds and houses
Leave one who would ne’er leave you.
I'll pledge you the blessed Bible,
Without and eke within,
That the faithful God will provide for us,
Without thanks to kith or kin.
O love, do you remember
When we lay all night alone,
Beneath the ash in the winter storm,
When the oak wood round did groan?
No shelter then from the blast had we,
The bitter blast or sleet,
But your gown to wrap about our heads,
And my coat around our feet.
PERCY HETHERINGTON FITZGERALD.
(1884 —)
Percy HETHERINGTON FirzcrraLp, M.A., F.8.A., was born in
Fane Valley, County Louth, in 1834. He was educated at Stony-
hurst College, Lancashire, and Trinity College, Dublin, after which
he was called’ to the Irish bar and appointed Crown Prosecutor.
He is the author of many works of fiction, most of which origi-
nally appeared in All the Year Round and Once a Week.
Mr. Fitzgerald is a most industrious literary worker, and has pub-
lished, besides ‘The Lives of the Sheridans,’ ‘Charles Lamb, his
Friends, his Haunts, and his Books,’ ‘ Life of David Garrick,’ ‘ The
Kembles,’ ‘The Life of George IV., The Royal Dukes and Prin-
cesses of the Family of George ui., ’ ‘Life and Times of William
IV.,’ and ‘ Fifty Years of Catholic Life and Social
SHERIDAN AS ORATOR.
From ‘ The Lives of the Sheridans.’
Sheridan’s oratorical reputation is mainly founded on
those “set” and prepared speeches delivered on stirring
occasions, which are to be read in collections. But these
carefully studied efforts give little idea of his general
powers. It is only by going very carefully through the
series of reports furnished so dramatically and accurately
by “Memory ” Woodfall that we see what a conspicuous
figure he was in the ordinary routine discussions of the
House. Having carefully followed him through some of
these conspicuous years, I find how industrious, versatile,
and combative he showed himself. It was, in fact, as a
“debater ” that he here exhibited those gifts, being always
ready with some brilliant, if not theatrical, attack on, or
reply to Pitt—or to Burke, when the latter began to sit on
the Treasury benches.
Wraxall has left a really admirable picture of him, with
an acute analysis of the arts, gifts, and devices by which
he gained his influence over the House: “ Sheridan exposed
an angry antagonist by sallies of wit, or attacked him with
classic elegance of satire; performing this arduous task in
the face of a crowded assembly, without losing for an in-
stant either his presence of mind, his facility of expression,
or his good humor. He wounded deepest, indeed, when he
1190
PERCY. HETHERINGTON FITZGERALD. 1191
smiled; and convulsed his hearers with laughter, while the
object of his ridicule or animadversion was twisting under
the lash. Nor did he, while thus chastising his adversary,
alter a muscle of his own countenance; which, as well as
his gestures, seemed to participate and display the unalter-
able serenity of his intellectual formation.”
It will be noted what a happy and subtle art of descrip-
tion is here shown by this observer, who goes on:
“ Rarely did he elevate his voice, and never except in sub-
servience to the dictates of his judgment, with the view
to produce a corresponding effect on his audience. Yet he
was always heard, generally listened to with eagerness,
and could obtain a hearing at almost any hour. Burke,
who wanted Sheridan’s nice tact and his amenity of man-
ner, was continually coughed down; and on those occasions
he lost his temper. Even Fox often tired the House by the
repetitions which he introduced into his speeches. Sheri-
dan never abused their patience.
“ At this period of his life, when he was not more than
thirty-three years of age, his countenance and features had
in them something peculiarly pleasing; indicative at once
of intellect, humor, and gayety. All these characteristics
played about his lips when speaking, and operated with in-
conceivable attraction; for they anticipated, as it were, to
the eye, the effect produced by his oratory on the ear; thus
opening for him a sure way to the heart or the under-
standing. Even the tones of his voice, which were singu-
larly mellifluous, aided the general effect of his eloquence;
nor was it accompanied by Burke’s unpleasant accent.
Pitt’s enunciation was unquestionably more imposing, dig-
nified, and sonorous; Fox displayed more argument, as
well as vehemence; Burke possessed more fancy and en-
thusiasm ; but Sheridan won his way by a sort of fascina-
tion. At thirty-three it might be said of his aspect, as
Milton does of the fallen angel’s form,
“ “His face had not yet lost
All her original brightness.’”
Lord Brougham, who had heard him speak, justly says:
“His worst efforts were those which he preferred himself,
full of imagery often far fetched, oftener gorgeous and
loaded with point that drew the attention of the hearer
1192 IRISH LITERATURE.
away from the thoughts to the words; and his best by far
were those where he declaimed with his deep, clear voice,
though somewhat thick utterance, with a fierce defiance of
some adversary, or an unappeasable vengeance against
some act; or reasoned rapidly, in a like tone, upon some
plain matter of fact, and exposed as plainly to homely
ridicule some puerile sophism. In all this his admirable
manner was aided by an eye singularly piercing ” (and he
adds in a note that “it had the singularity of never wink-
ing”) “and a countenance which, though coarse and even
in some features gross, was animated and expressive, and
could easily assume the figure of both rage and menace
and scorn. With all his ingenious tropes and far-fetched
similes (such as the picture of Napoleon having ‘ thrones
for his watch-towers, and for the palisades of his castle
scepters tipped or stuck with crowns’)—for he experi-
mented in various forms of the image—there came some
natural burst, like that on the liberty of the Press, when
he pictured both Houses as venal and corrupt, Court and
Prince bad: ‘Give me but an unfettered Press, and I will
defy them to encroach a hair’s-breadth upon the liberties
of England!’” But it would take a volume to deal with
the subject of this remarkable man’s oratory.
On the other hand, from perpetual exhibition, we find
much that is artificial and mechanical in his various
methods; as, in contriving an apparently spontaneous re-
ply to an adversary, if the latter used a quotation, he
would hurry out to consult the book, and discover some-
thing preceding or following the quoted passage which
would give it a new turn.
If a friend made a sally or used an original metaphor
capable of political application, he would take it as his
own on the first opportunity. He had also many pleasant
thoughts carefully “cut and dried,” as it is called, ready
for application to certain characters. For some of his
most telling replies his habit was to retire to a neighbor-
ing coffee-house and write the most lively, stinging pas-
sages, which he would fit in here and there among more
level portions. All this sort of “ workmanship ” must have
been soon found out, and no doubt impaired the weight and
influence of his utterances. Latterly he must have been
listened to with much the same feeling as have been cer-
PERCY HETHERINGTON FITZGERALD. 1193
tain licensed jesters and entertainers of the House in our
own day.
In following him through those varied contests, we are
struck by his airy pleasantry; though he is not to be com-
pared with Burke, who showed a higher sincerity and more
classical versatility, and who was “terribly in earnest ”
about principle, and utterly uncompromising in the small-
est things. Sheridan, on the contrary, we find ready
enough to make some light and airy retort, without much
regard as to where he picked up the weapons; he varied
the monotony of the contest by many a pleasant stroke,
which must have been amusing to the House.
Another remarkable feature in most of his speeches was
that he seemed to speak with effect only when making at-
tacks on the special objects of his enmity. One of these
was almost invariably Mr. Pitt, to whom he showed the
rancor that men of loose life often have against purists
whose character and success are a rebuke. Another was
Mr. Dundas—until he came to defend himself as roughly
as he was attacked—an object of dislike whom Sheridan
assailed with a genuine vigor and venom. Windham, too,
he did not spare. Indeed, it came at last to this—that
some of his most telling efforts were directed against his
own former friends, with whom he had completely broken.
It will be entertaining to note, as in the case of Burke,
the scenes, the disputes he so often had with Mr. Pitt, and
which were continued through a long course of years.
These were trifling, and certainly unworthy of both, the
time of the House being taken up with their frivolous al-
tercations. Thus, when Pitt had once taunted him with
his theatrical pursuits, Sheridan retorted by a very un-
becoming form of jest, which was then in the height of
popularity—viz., sneering at his well-known regularity and
strictness of life. These insinuations were taken from the
satires of the ‘Rolliad,’ of which they were the regular
stock-in-trade. As in a debate that arose in May, 1787,
Sheridan bitterly inveighed against Pitt, who, he said,
was the real culprit, dealing in professions, not acts, Pitt
scornfully replied that he believed that he (Sheridan) was
sincere in this case—i.e., in making a charge against him;
and when it was thought what a field for ingenuity there
was in spreading calumnies and reports against him, it was
1194 IRISH LITERATURE.
no wonder he seized on this matter as an excuse. “I am
glad he admits,” said Sheridan, “that I generally speak
with sincerity.” “No,” said Mr. Pitt, across the table;
“not so; but merely in what you have said to-day against
me.” On which Sheridan went off into a rather rambling
series of charges as to Pitt’s inconsistency, his waste of
public money, his bestowing titles and honors corruptly.
“On the whole,” he said, using the favorite sneer, “ Mr.
Pitt had always professed purity, but had acted with self-
attention and neglect of others.”
Again, in March, 1788, Pitt glanced at Sheridan, saying
that “in most of his speeches there was much fancy, in
many shining wit, in others very ingenious argument, in
all great eloquence, and in some few truth and justice.”
Sheridan said he rejected such compliments with scorn.
He insinuated that Pitt was fond of shiftiness. He was,
he said, one of the dark, concealed, and secret band skulk-
ing behind the throne.
Next, on Pitt’s announcing that he intended to reduce
the duties on brandies, Sheridan taunted him with his old
boastings, “that he would put down smuggling,” and said
that all his measures had failed. Pitt replied that he
wondered which he ought to admire most—his display of
confidence or his ignorance. The other retorted that he
was ne v convinced he was right, from Pitt’s showing him-
self so very angry. His behavior was not decent.
All through these squabbles we find Sheridan boldly
criticising Bank Acts, loans, bullion, and topics of the
kind. In reference to which Mr. Tierney told Moore that
“Sheridan was generally wrong about financial matters.
It was certainly a fine holiday-time for Mr. Pitt when he
had no abler critic of his financial schemes than Sheridan.
Pitt, however, had a very high idea of him, and thought
him,” Tierney added, “a far greater man than Mr. Fox.”
In the same spirit his friend Windham said of him “ that
he was ignorant of almost every subject he had to handle,
and manfully confessed it.”
In May, 1794, there was another scene, when Sheridan
declared that those seditious conspiracies had no existence
save “in the foul imaginations of Ministers.” On which
Pitt answered scornfully, that this sort of abuse of him had
been too often repeated to have any novelty for him, or to
PERCY HETHERINGTON FITZGERALD.. 1195
be entitled to any degree of importance either with him or
his friends. Pitt was called on to make an apology, which
he did, “ where alone it is due,—to you, sir, and to the
House.” On which Sheridan angrily said this apology was
disorderly, and a breach in itself of order, as it seemed to
except him. Still, it was no matter; for he had received
his apology with the same contempt with which he had the
provocation. As to the “foul imaginations” of the Min-
isters, etc., he repeated the words, for the Speaker had not
called him to order at the proper time. As to Pitt, he left
the House to judge of the manliness of the person who
sheltered himself in the shade of his situation, and who
dealt in insinuations which, but for his situation, he durst
not make. On such conduct he would utter no comment,
because he knew there were expressions of scorn and dis-
dain which the House would not permit him to use. He
would now ask an apology from Pitt for the provocation
given inside the House to all, and he was convinced “no
provocation would be given outside.” This was certainly
blustering.
In January, 1794, there was yet another of these alter-
cations on pensions, “ jobbing,” etc., in which Sheridan
put himself forward to assail certain allowances—among
others, some to his own friends. He declared, however, it
was only the system, not individuals, he was aiming at.
Burke indignantly commented on this distinction “ be-
tween the jobber and the jobbed ”; and after the matter had
been shown to be wholly trivial, Mr. Pitt asked scornfully,
“Would he now persevere in saying that he was only in-
fluenced by good will to the persons he incriminated? Or
if he did, could he imagine that any one in the House
would credit him?” Sheridan was eagerly rising, when
Fox interfered, and said that, “in his opinion, founded on
experience, Sheridan had as much credit as Mr. Pitt.”
Sheridan then said he was glad he had been prevented
answering, as he might have said something unpalatable.
As to the opinion of the House of his credit, he would not
venture to say anything; but it was only in the House
that Pitt would venture to tell him so. On which Mr.
Stanley protested against these personalities; and Mr.
Yorke, with excellent good sense, said it was hard for
members, sent up from the country to mind their constit-
1196 IRISH LITERATURE.
uents’ business, “to have to listen to such nonsense.”
Sheridan, therefore, who, in the common Irish phrase, had
“blazed,” it was clear, was eager to provoke the Minister
to combat, as we find from his taunts on two or three oc-
casions.
This hostility, however, was alternated with exercises
of an agreeable pleasantry. Thus, when Pitt gravely pro-
posed to levy a tax of a guinea on every horse starting for
a race, this recognition of sport was too tempting to be
passed by. “ Lord Surrey,” says Wraxall, “ who possessed
much racing knowledge, advised him to alter his tax, and
to substitute in its place five pounds on the winning horse
of any plate of fifty pounds’ value. The Minister instantly
adopted, with many acknowledgments, the Earl’s sugges-
tion. Sheridan, who sat close by Lord Surrey, then ris-
ing, after having paid some compliments to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer on his dexterity and jockeyship, observed
that whenever Lord Surrey should next visit Newmarket
his sporting companions, who would be sweated by this
new tax of his fabrication, instead of commending his in-
genuity, would probably exclaim, Jockey of Norfolk, be not
so bold! This convulsed the House; and even Pitt, whose
features did not always relax on hearing Sheridan’s jests,
however brilliant or apposite they might be, joined in the
laugh.”
This was a specimen of that spontaneous gayety which
made him so welcome to the House. He was not always so
happy. One of his stock devices was to make some farci-
cal pleasantry on names of statesmen; as on Mr. Bragge:
“ Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better; ” or when
pressed to “ name ” some one to whom he was making allu-
sion, he said he could do it as soon as you could say “ Jack
Robinson.” Or he would tell of one “ Paterson,” who kept
a shop at Manchester, and, having a tilted cart in use
for his business, had the names of “ Pitt and Paterson”
painted on the front of it. This man, who was known to
have no partner in his trade, was asked what he meant by
the name of Pitt on his cart, as he had no share in the
business. “Ah!” replied he, “he has indeed no share in
the business; but a very large share in the profits of it.”
This seems a poor sort of wit. One who is ever looking out
PERCY HETHERINGTON FITZGERALD. 1197
for some superficial allusion of this kind to win a laugh
will rarely enjoy respect.
Mr. Moore has laid open for us Sheridan’s private labora-
tory where he compounded his oratory—the images, meta-
phors, prepared bursts—the accurately marked places
where “Good God, sir!” was to come in. These “ fire-
works ” kept by him for use do not belong to oratory, whose
legitimate imagery is inspired by the emotion of the
moment and belongs to the occasion. It is extraordinary
the difference of feeling found when comparing his images
with those of Burke, so genuine, so apropos, so forcible.
“Burke,” said Sir Gilbert Elliot, “ abounds with these fine
passages; but no man could ever perceive in him the least
trace of preparation, and he never appears more incon-
testably inspired by the moment, and transported with the
fury of the god within him, than in those finished passages
which it would cost even Shakespeare long study and labor
to produce.”
On a superficial view, it is often customary to class Sheri-
dan with the statesmen of his period. “ Fox, Burke, Sheri-
dan,” etc., are named together, as though he had any
equally important influence on the political events of his
time.
But the truth, as we have before observed, is that
Sheridan cannot be counted “a serious politician.” It
would almost seem that he had few convictions. In all the
abundant political memoirs of the time, of which there are
scores, we rarely find his name mentioned as being of ac-
count at any crisis; though he figures largely in schemes,
and in tortuous intrigues, or as a supposed adviser of “an
illustrious personage.” Mr. Croker truly says: “How
many, after all, are the events in the public history of Eng-
land with which posterity will, in any manner whatever,
connect the name of Sheridan? In fact, the history of
England might be written without a single introduction
of his name, and in all probability hereafter it will be so
written.” Industrious, indeed, he was as a debater, and
took part in discussing all manner of subjects; but having
read all these efforts carefully, they seem generally con-
ceived in a labored petty spirit, merely for the embarrass-
ment of some Minister; or that he had “ got up” his facts
without having any particular interest in the question.
1198 IRISH LITERATURE.
And in this estimate of Sheridan as a politician we must
not overlook the fact that in those times of strict party
spirit we always find him somehow estranged from mem-
bers of his party, following the guide of his own interest
and fighting for his own hand. The reason seems to be that
unhappily he was ever pressed with debts and difficulties,
now surmounting them, now overpowered by them; a strug-
gle which is certain to lend a shifting tone to political
views. It is difficult indeed for a man thus harassed to
take up Spartan or heroic principles. This end, with so
impulsive a character, seemed more likely to be gained by
devotion to a person of such influence as was the Prince
of Wales and Regent, than in barren service to the abstract
principles of a party whose coming to power seemed hope-
less; nor was it likely that a man pressed and straitened
by debt, and notorious for the shifts and devices by which
he strove to release himself from embarrassments, would
be likely to be over scrupulous in matters of party.
WILLIAM JOHN FITZPATRICK.
(1880—18965.)
“THE modern Suetonius,” as the lively writer of ‘ Recollections
of Dublin Castle,’ calls W. J. Fitzpatrick, ‘‘ was,” he says, “' perpet-
ually groping among old papers, letters, and the like, and discover-
ing awkward secrets. He would tell you in a cozy way, and in his
high treble: ‘I have just purchased a number of curious docu-
ments, in one of which there is a curious transaction relating to
your grandfather. Did you ever know that he had a salary from
the Government to act as spy, etc.? I have all the documents,’”
He certainly was an industrious student of his day of the careers
of illustrious Irishmen, and one of the best authorities on the social
life of the past in Ireland.
He was born Aug. 81, 1880, and was educated at Clongowes
‘Wood College. His first work of any importance was ‘The Life,
Times, and Correspondence of Dr. Doyle’ (1861). This was fol-
lowed by a biography of Lord Cloncurry, and a work in defense
of Lady Morgan entitled ‘The Friends, Foes, and Adventures of
Lady Morgan,’to which there came a sequel, ‘Lady Morgan, her
Career, Literary and Personal.’ ‘ Anecdotal Memoirs of Archbishop
Whately’ next appeared; and this was followed by ‘Lord Edward
Fitzgerald and his Betrayers’ (1869). ‘Ireland before the Union’
appeared in 1870, and was succeeded by a volume of even greater
historical value, entitled ‘The Sham Squire and the Informers of
1798.’ The description of this remarkable figure in the history of
Ireland is brought out clearly, and the whole story is a striking pic-
ture of the state of society at the troubled period immediately before
and after the Act of Union. In 1873 a volume of pleasant gossip
under the title of ‘ Irish Wits and Worthies, including Dr. Lanigan,’
was published; a life of Lever also came from his pen. He
wrote ‘ Historical Discoveries of the Days of Tone and Emmet,’ and
was a frequent contributor to periodical literature. His books make
a long list, but one of the most important was ‘The Secret Service
under Pitt,’ and the most curious perhaps was a pamphlet claiming
for Thomas Scott, the brother of Sir Walter Scott, the chief credit
for a large part of the Waverley Novels. He was a member of the
Royal Irish Academy and of the Dublin Royal Society. He died in
1895.
ANECDOTES OF KEOGH, THE IRISH MASSILLON.
From ‘Irish Wits and Worthies.’
That love of hospitable and convivial pleasure character-
istic of the old school of Irish priesthood, and which our
historian sought to vindicate against the aspersions of
. 1
1200 IRISH LITERATURE. ©
Giraldus Cambrensis, was not only illustrated in Lanigan’s
own idiosyncracy, but in that of his friend, the Rev. M. B.
Keogh, as well. The latter was hospitable to a fault, and
would almost coin his heart into gold to give away; while
legitimate creditors, as is often the fashion with literary
men, were invariably left unpaid. A merchant to whom
Mr. Keogh was indebted, knowing that he would have no
chance of settlement if directly applied for, appealed to
him with the representation that, as he was in great dif-
ficulties a pecuniary loan would be specially acceptable.
The preacher replied that he could not give it just then,
but if the applicant would come and dine with him on the
following Sunday he would try meanwhile to make out the
loan for him somehow or another. The money was duly
produced, and the merchant, full of expressions of grati-
tude, reminding him of his old claim, returned the over-
plus to Father Keogh, who henceforth regarded him with
feelings not altogether paternal.
As a natural consequence of the perverse principle which
he cultivated, Father Keogh was constantly in debt and
difficulties. One day, when disrobing after delivering a
charity sermon in Whitefriar Street Chapel, where a vast
crowd had congregated to hear him surpass himself, two
bailiffs stalked into the sacristy, and placing him in a cov-
ered car drove off in triumph. Dr. Spratt good-naturedly
accompanied his friend, and as they neared the sheriff’s
prison one of the officers, pulling out a pistol, said : “ Father
Keogh, I know your popularity, and in case you appeal to
the mob, I draw the trigger.” The idol of the people sub-
mitted to his fate with the desperate resignation he had so
often inculcated in his sermons, and turning to Dr. Spratt
said: “ My dear friend, I am arrested at the suit evidently
of B——, the coach-maker. Go to him and arrange it.”
The good priest did as requested, and returned to the prison
with a receipt in full, which he considered equivalent to
an order for the liberation of his friend. But the docu-
ment proved futile; it turned out that Mr. Keogh was ar-
rested at the suit of an utterly different creditor, and the
glee of the coach-maker, who never expected to be paid, was
only equaled by Mr. Keogh’s dismay.
The late Rev. J. Lalor, P.P. of Athy, the former coad-
jutor of Father Keogh at Baldoyle, used to tell that his
WILLIAM JOHN FITZPATRICK. 1261
curates, as they could never get one farthing from him,
were generally most shabbily clad, and tried to console
themselves by the reflection that in this respect they re-
sembled our Lord’s disciples, who were sent without scrip
or staff. Mr. Lalor, at last losing patience, reefed the knee
of his small-clothes, and furnished with this startling argu-
ment waited upon the pastor and claimed the price of a
new one. “ My dear fellow,” was the reply, “I have not
a farthing in the world; but if you go into that dressing-
room yonder you may take your choice of four.”
The late Dr. M——1 was in the habit of paying Father
Keogh, when in delicate health, a visit every Wednesday,
and remaining to dine with him. One evening the doctor
drank more than freely, and advised no end of draughts
of less palatable flavor. When taking leave, Mr. Keogh
placed a crumpled paper in his hand. The doctor’s knock
was heard betimes next morning. “ I called,” said he, “ to
represent a slight mistake. Only fancy, you gave me an
old permit instead of a note.” The reply was cool: “ You
cannot carry more than a certain amount of whisky with-
out a permit; I saw that you had exceeded the proper
quantum.” Father Michael Keogh’s powers of sarcasm,
often most capriciously and dyspeptically exercised, were
withering. A priest who had formerly been a Jesuit was
lionized at a dinner where Mr. Keogh was present. “I
think, sir,” he exclaimed from the end of the table, “ you
were a Jesuit, but have since left the order.” A stiff bow
was the reply. “Judas was also in the society of Jesus,”
proceeded his tormentor, “but he took the cord and died
a Franciscan.”
But Father Keogh’s forte, after pulpit oratory, was rare
powers of histrionic mimicry. He was once invited by the
late good though eccentric pastor of Duleek to preach a
charity sermon. After delivering a powerful appeal, which
melted many of the audience to tears, Father Keogh pro-
ceeded to read aloud some papers, containing parochial
announcements, which the parish priest had placed in his
hands for that purpose. But the most illiterate member
of the assembled flock at once perceived that Mr. Keogh, by
his tone and gesture, was mimicking the peculiarities of
their primitive pastor. The latter was not slow in recog-
nizing his own portrait, and starting up from a seat of
%
1202 IRISH LITERATURE.
honor which he occupied beneath the pulpit, exclaimed:
“You Dublin jackeen, was it for this I invited you to
Duleek?”
How an ecclesiastic, whose brow when engaged in de-
livering a divine message seemed not unsuited for the
miter, could sometimes suffer the cap and bells to usurp its
place can be accounted for in no other way than that
vagaries of this sort formed part of the eccentricity of his
high genius. He had a keen eye to detect the weaknesses
or absurdities of his neighbor, but was utterly blind to his
own. In hearing these anecdotes of this remarkable Irish-
man—which are now told publicly for the first time—it is
difficult to associate them with one whose prestige was of
the most brilliant and exalted character. Since Dean Kir-
wan preached, there had not appeared a more irresistible
or impressive pulpit orator. Hundreds of Protestants
daily attended his controversial sermons; and we have
heard them say that it was a rare treat to hear Father
Keogh answering in the evening the polemical propositions
enunciated from the pulpit by the Rev. Mortimer O’Sulli-
van in the morning. He was entitled to the receipts taken
at some of these evening sermons. Father Murphy, his
prior, handed him on one of these occasions £2 10s. “I
viewed the congregation,” said Mr. Keogh, “and there was
more than £4 10s. present.” “Granted,” replied his supe-
rior, “ but you owe me £2 for ten years, and I had no other
means of getting paid.” “Those who know me,” observed
Dr. Willis, in a communication to the author, “ are aware
that I never was given to weeping, especially in my younger
days; but I do declare that during a course of Lenten ser-
mons in Church Street, Keogh had every one of the congre-
gation in tears, including myself, whom he had so often
previously, in private, convulsed with laughter.”
The old magazine from which an extract has been al-
ready culled opens with an elaborate sketch of the Rev.
M. B. Keogh: “The practice of extemporary preaching,
go judiciously encouraged or enforced by the Church of
Rome,” it states, “ is admirably calculated to call forth the
powers and the resources of such a mind as Mr. Keogh’s.
He is evidently of a quick and ardent temperament, swayed
by sudden impulse, and often, in the hurrying moment of
excitement, carried beyond himself by a species of inspira-
WILLIAM JOHN FITZPATRICK. 1203
tion. To tie down such a man to his notes would be to ex-
tinguish half his enthusiasm; it would be a sort of intel-
lectual sacrilege—an insult to the majesty of genius.” Mr.
Keogh’s success as a preacher was not due to commanding
appearance, for, like Curran’s, it seems to have been far
from prepossessing. He had the same powers of mind and
eye-as Curran, who was wont to observe that it cost him
half-an-hour longer to reach the hearts of the jury than it
would have taken a less repulsive-featured man with the
same arguments. “See him in the season of Lent,” observes
a contemporary critic, “for, probably, the fortieth time,
standing unrobed before the unornamented altar, without
text, form, or genuflexion, starting solemnly but abruptly
upon his subject. Mark the extending of his arm, the
penetrating glance of his kindled eye; hear his deep,
mellow, and impressive tones; listen to his rich, impas-
sioned, spirit-stirring diction, and then say, if you can,
that you feel the absence of fine features, courtly manners,
or commanding stature.” And yet we are not aware that
the sermons of this great orator exist in any accessible
form. Nor is the loss, perhaps, as great as might at first
sight be supposed. As in the case of Dean Kirwan—whose
printed sermons are unworthy of his high reputation—the
great effect of Father Keogh’s pulpit oratory seems, on
post mortem examination, due rather to the manner than
the matter. Dr. Spratt, having got a discourse of his re-
ported, presented him with the proof-sheets for correction;
but, although accurately taken down, Mr. Keogh would not
believe that he had delivered it in that form, and, filled with
disgust, tore up the sheets and irrevocably canceled the
sermon.
Mr. Keogh, during his hours of relaxation, exhibited all
the exuberance of a liberated school-boy on the playground.
A gentleman, who we fear played cards rather for profit
than pleasure, having one evening at Raheny pocketed
pool after pool with complacent rapacity, at last, having
secured an unusually large “ haul,” suddenly stood up and
declared it was time to leave. Keogh, with the utmost
good humor, replied that it was too early to break up, and
that he should give his host and friends an opportunity of
retrieving their losses. But the man of lucre, with pleas-
ant banter, extricated himself from the playful “ collar-
1204 IRISH LITERATURE.
ing” of his friends; and just as he had reached the hall,
Fr. Keogh caught him in his muscular grip, and, turning
him upside down, the entire contents of his pockets fell in
a loud avalanche to the ground. The money was gathered
up, the gamester returned, and the play continued with
varying success until a later hour. This anecdote was told
by the butler of the house, who at least was a considerable
gainer by the incident.
“An idle brain is the devil’s workshop,” was an apo-
thegm of his own concoction, which his audience heard him
utter more than once. Two other favorite expressions of
his were, “ tinseled vanity ” and “feathered foppery,” and
he declared inextinguishable war against both. Like Cur-
ran, Moore, and other great contemporaries, Mr. Keogh’s
origin was humble. He never shrank from avowing it
manfully, and, we rather think, used those avowals as
physic to purge the pride engendered by public adulation.
The father of the Irish Massillon was a coffin-maker in
Cook Street. A friend asked him one day, “ How is your
father?” “Oh,” replied Keogh with a very long visage,
“T left him working for death!”
Nevertheless, the sire saw the son down; and his death
occurred under the following circumstances. In attempt-
ing to attain an almost celestial degree of perfection as
deliverer of divine messages, he sank from Scylla into the
jaws of Charybdis. Somewhat erroneously supposing that
his articulation was not quite as distinct as formerly, he
desired a dentist to pull out all his front teeth, and to in-
sert a false set in their room. Dental science was not then
in its prime—the cure proved far worse than the disease.
The clumsy tusks which had been substituted for nature’s
teeth obstructed rather than facilitated the flow of his
oratory; but, still worse, they refused to perform the office
of mastication. Dyspepsia, with a hundred other ills, were
fostered in this way, and Mr. Keogh rapidly sank beneath
their sapping influence. One of his last letters, written
from his father’s house in Cook Street, where he died, was
1 Mr. Keogh worked at the trade for a time himself, He used to sa;
that when people faulted coffins, because of unsightly knots in the wood,
he would reply : ‘Oh, I can hide them with an angel or two.” Father
Keogh inherited his talent from his mother, who kept a school. He was
such an apt scholar that the usual period for theological study was con-
siderably ‘Shred in his favor. pe loa á
WILLIAM JOHN FITZPATRICK. 1205
addressed to Dr. Spratt, begging his prayers. But...
Keogh also had his joke at that solemn hour. A priest, fa-
mous for following the fox-hounds, having paid him a visit,
Keogh in a voice hardly audible muttered, “ Ah, Father
John, you were always in at the death.” Mr. Keogh did not
long survive his friend Dr. Lanigan. He died 9th Septem-
ber, 1831, aged forty-three years. A tablet to his memory,
inscribed with a very eulogistic epitaph, is erected in the
Roman Catholic Church, Baldoyle; but his remains repose
in the vaults of B8. Michael and John, Exchange Street,
Dublin.
ELLEN FITZSIMON.
(1805—1888.)
ELLEN O'CoNNELL, the eldest of the daughters of Daniel O'Connell,
all remarkable both for beauty and for accomplishments, was born
in Dublin Nov. 12,1805. She married the late Christopher Fitssi-
mon, M.P., of Clencullen, County Dublin. In 1868 she published
‘ Derrynane Abbey,’ and about 1876 she began to write ‘ Recollec-
tions of my Father and his Times,’ but she did not live to finish it.
She contributed poems to The Citizen, The Nation, Duffy's Fireside
Magazine, etc., over the signature “TL. N. F.”
THE SONG OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT IN
AMERICA,
OR THE WOODS OF CAILLINO.
My heart is heavy in my breast, my ears are full of tears,
My memory is wandering back to long departed years,—
To those bright days long, long ago,
When naught I dreamed of sordid care or worldly woe,
But roamed, a gay, light-hearted boy, the woods of Caillino.
There, in the spring-time of my life and spring-time of the year,
I’ve watched the snowdrop start from earth, the first young
buds appear,
The sparkling stream o’er pebbles flow,
The modest violet and golden primrose grow,
Within thy deep and mossy dells, beloved Caillino.
?T was there I wooed my Mary Dhuv and won her for my bride,
Who bore me three fair daughters and four sons, my age’s
pride;
Though cruel fortune was our foe,
And steeped us to the lips in bitter want and woe,
Yet cling our hearts to those sad days we passed near Caillino.
At length, by misery bowed to earth, we left our native strand,
And crossed the wide Atlantic to this free and happy land;
Though toils we had to undergo,
Yet soon content and happy peace ’t was ours to know,
And plenty such as never blessed our hearts, near Caillino.
1206
ELLEN FITZSIMON. 1207
And Heaven a blessing has bestowed more precious far than
wealth
Has spared us to each other, full of years, yet strong in health;
Across the threshold when we go,
We see our children’s children round us grow,
Like sapling oaks within thy woods, far distant Caillino.
Yet sadness clouds our hearts to think that, when we are no
more,
Our bones must find a resting place far, far from Erin’s shore;
For us, no funeral, sad and slow,
Within the ancient abbey’s burial mound will go,—
No, we must slumber far from home, far, far from Caillino.
Yet, O, if spirits e’er can leave the appointed place of rest,
Once more will I revisit thee, dear Isle that I love best!
O’er thy green vales will hover slow,
And many a tearful parting blessing will bestow
On all,—but most of all, on thee, beloved Caillino!
RICHARD FLECKNOE.
— 1678.)
RicHARD FLECKNOE, poet and dramatic writer, lived in the reign
of Charles II. He was an Irishman by birth, and was originally a
riest of the Order of Jesus. Flecknoe owes the rescue of his name
im oblivion to the satirical geniusof Dryden. The satirist availed
himself of Flecknoe’s name as a stalking-horse from behind which
to assail the poetaster Shadwell, who had been appointed to replace
him in the laureateship. The opening lines of this satire may be
quoted as a specimen of the whole:—
“ All human things are subject to decay ;
‘And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
‘Was called to empire, and had governed long ;
In prose and verse was owned without dispute
Throughout the realms of nonsense absolute.”
It is but fair, however, to remark that, clever and effective as
this poem is, it is in its application to Flecknoe utterly unjust.
Flecknoe was a considerable traveler. He went to Lisbon about
1643, where he remained some time. From Lisbon, in 1646, he
made a vor to Brazil, and on his return in 1650 he wrote his
‘Travels of Ten Years in Europe, Asia, Afrique, and America.’
Flecknoe was the author of several plays, only one of which,
*Love’s Dominion,’ printed in 1654, was acted. This piece was
republished in 1674 as ‘ Love's Kingdom,’ a pastoral tragi-comedy.
This was not the play as acted, but as rewritten and corrected.
His minor pieces contain many happy turns of thought and felici-
ties of expression. His ‘ Damoiselles 4 la Mode,’ printed in 1677 and
addressed to the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, and ‘Sir W. .
Davenant’s Voyage to the Other World’ are witty exposures of the
literary and dramatic foibles of the day. His unpopularity among
the players, and the satire of Dryden, upon whom, nevertheless,
Flecknoe composed a witty and graceful epigram, must have been
in a great measure owing to his attacks on the immorality and gen-
eral worthlessness of the English stage. An interesting but almost
unknown production of Flecknoe’s is ‘The Idea of His Highness
Oliver, late Lord Protector,’ etc., London, 1659—an appreciative
estimate of Cromwell’s character, as evidenced in his Parliamentary
career and his achievements as soldier and statesman. He also
wrote ‘Ermina, or the Chaste Lady,’ ‘The Marriage of Oceanus
and Britannia,’ : ‘pigrams and Enigmatical Characters,’ 1670, in
8vo ; ‘Miscellanea,’ or poems of all sorts, with divers other pieces,
1653, in 12mo; ‘Diarium, or the Journal,’ ided into twelve
Jornadas, in burlesque verse, London, 1656, in 12mo ; and ‘ Dis-
course of the English Stage.’ Flecknoe died in 1678.
1208
RICHARD FLECKNOE. 1209
OF DRINKING.
The fountains drink caves subterren,
The rivulets drink the fountains dry;
Brooks drink those rivulets again,
And them some river gliding by;
Until some gulping sea drink them,
And ocean drinks up that again.
Of ocean then does drink the sky;
When having brewed it into rain,
The earth with drink it does supply,
And plants do drink up that again.
When turned to liquor in the vine,
’T is our turn next to drink the wine.
By this who does not plainly see,
How into our throats at once is hurled—
Whilst merrily we drinking be—
The quintessence of all the world?
Whilst all drink then in land, air, sea,
Let us too drink as well as they.
ON TRAVEL.
It is not travel makes the man, ’t is true,
Unless a man could travel, sir, like you,
By putting off the worst and putting on
The best of every country where they come;
Their language, manners, fashions, and their use,
Purged from the dross, and stript from the abuse,
Until at last in manners they become
New men and creatures at their coming home;
Whilst your pied traveler, who nothing knows
Of other countries’ fashions but their clothes,
And speaks their language but as parrots do,
Only at best a broken word or two,
Goes and returns the same he went again,
By carrying England still along with him;
Or else returns far worse by bringing home
The worst of every land where he does come,
HENRY FLOOD.
(1782—1791.)
Henry FLoop, one of the bright stars in the constellation of
Irish orators which shone in the eighteenth century, was born
in 1782, in the family mansion near Kilkenny. He was the son of
the Right Hon. Warden Flood, Chief Justice of the Court of King's
Bench in Ireland. He was early sent to school, on leaving which
he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he stayed but a short time,
and about 1749 was sent to Oxford.
In 1760 he returned to Ireland and took bis seat in the Irish
House of Commons as member for Kilkenny, his native county, a
seat which he exchanged for that of Callan, in the same county, in
the new Parliament of 1761. At the time of his entrance on
political life bribery and corruption were rife, and the House was
go much under the control of the British Government that its in-
dependence was only in name. Flood took a bold stand against this
state of affairs, and formed a party which advocated the freedom
of the Irish Parliament and sought to overthrow the prevailing sys-
tem of bribery. He became eminently distinguished for his elo-
quence, and for the zeal and perseverance with which he advocated
every measure that he re; led as beneficial to his country.
He endeavored to obtain the repeal of a law dating from the
time of Henry VII., called Poynings’ law, by which the British
Government had the power of altering or rejecting all the bills of
the Irish legislature. le succeeded in carrying the Octennial bill,
by which the duration of any Parliament was limited to eight years,
a reform which was considered of great political advantage to Ire-
land ; and he strenuously advocated the establishment of a native
militia in Ireland as a balance against the presence of a standing
army. After leading the Opposition for some years, Flood changed
his tactics, alternately supporting or opposing the measures brought
forward by successive administrations up to 1780, as he considered
them beneficial or otherwise ; and this line of conduct no doubt
frequently drew upon him the charge of political inconsistency. In
1774 he had accepted the lucrative post of one of the Vice-Treasurers
of Ireland, but it was only on condition of maintaining his principles,
and when he found this no longer possible he resigned in 1781, and
appeared once more as the opponent of the Government. But the old
fotvor of his eloquence, so long dormant, seemed slow to rouse, and
he is said never to have spoken again with the power he had shown
in earlier days.
There were now two leaders of the opposition in the Irish House of
Commons, and the natural result ensued. Flood and Grattan quar-
reled ; the more violent of the party sided with Flood, the more
moderate with Grattan, and several passages of arms took place in
the House. One of these occurred in 1783, and was carried to a de-
Foe. of animosity seldom equaled. Grattan, fixing his eyes upon
exclaimed : “ You have great talents, but you have infa-
1210
HENRY FLOOD. 1211
mously sold them ! for years you have kept silence that you might
make gain! Ideclare before your country, before the whole world,
before yourself, that you are adishonest man!” Flood replied, but
such was the strain of his invective that the Speaker interfered, and
only allowed his justification to be made several days later.
The party adhering to Grattan gradually gained ascendency, and
Flood turned his thoughts to England. Through the influence of
the Duke of Chandos he became Member for Winchester, and took
his seat in the British House of Commons in December, 1783. Owing
to the reputation which he had acquired in Ireland, great things
were expected from him. But his first appearance proved a failure
which ever after crippled him. Entering the House toward the end
of an important debate on Mr. Fox's East India bill, and when tired
by along journey, he was imprudent enough to attempt to speak
onasubject of which at the very outset he confessed himeelf ignorant.
His vigor failed him ; his speech was tedious and awkward in de-
livery, though correct enough in diction; his eloquence seemed
utterly to have left him, and he could only produce dry, worn-out ar-
guments, based on general principles, and noton warm, living facts.
Before he had time to recover his reputation, a dissolution of
Parliament took place, and, the Duke of Chandos refusing his sup-
port. Flood betook himself to the borough of Seaford. In the new
arliament he made several weighty and successful speeches, and
was fast acquiring a good position in the House, when in 1790 he
made the false move of introducing a reform bill. The time was
most inopportune, as revolution and not reform was what was hoped
for on one side and feared on the other. As a consequence the two
great parties combined against him at the next election, and he was
left without a seat. Stung to the quick, and suffering at the same
time from an attack of gout, he retired to his estate of Farmley near
Kilkenny. At this place a fire broke out, and, though still suffering
from illness, in the excitement he exposed himself and was attacked
. by pleurisy, which carried him off on the 2d of December, 1791.
He had married Lady Frances Beresford in 1763, a lady who
brought him fortune as well as a wide and influential connection.
In 1769, while Member for Callan, he had an unfortunate dispute
with his colleague, Mr. Agar, and in a duel which ensued the latter
was killed. For this Flood was tried and acquitted at the spring
assizes of 1770 in Kilkenny. By his will he bequeathed property
to the value of £5.000 ($25,000) to the University of Dublin, but
this bequest was ultimately set aside by an appeal to the law of mort-
main.
As an orator Flood has been highly praised by his friends as he
has been fiercely blamed by his enemies ; but there must have been
no small charm in his eloquence when it made his audience forget
his rasping voice and irritating habit of lowering it at the end of bis
sentences. However famous he was in his native Parliament, there
can be no doubt that he was there soon overshadowed by the tower-
ing figure of Grattan, between whom and Flood there were few things
in common. Grattan’s moving power was an enthusiastic love of
country and a poetic nature, while Flood’s was toa great extent
vanity, although it must be admitted that he was a warm and un-
1212 IRISH LITERATURE.
deviating lover of truth and honesty. While at Oxford he wrote a
poem on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, one stanza of which
was afterward echoed by Gray in his ‘Elegy.’ His ' Pindaric Ode
to Fame’ isnervous and vigorous, and his poem on the discovery of
America contains several good passages. In addition to original
work, he translated two speeches of Alachines and the Crown
Oration of Demosthenes, after whom he tried to model his own style.
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, in his ‘ Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,’
says of Flood: “There is something inexpressibly melancholy in
the life of this man. . . . Though he attained to a position which,
before him, had been unknown in Ireland ; though the unanimous
verdict of his contemporaries pronounced him to be one of the
greatest intellects that ever adorned the Irish Parliament ; and
though there is not a single act of his life which may not be con-
strued in asense perfectly in harmony with honor and with patriot-
ism, yet his career presents one long series of disappointments and
reverses. At an age when most statesmen are in the zenith of their
influence he sank into political impotence. The party he had formed
discarded him as ite leader. The reputation he so dearly prized was
clouded and assailed ; the principles he had sown germinated and
fructified indeed, but others reaped their fruit; and he is now
scarcely remembered except as an object of a powerful invective in
Ireland and as an example of a deplorable failure in England. A
few pages of oratory, which probably at best only represent the
substance of his speeches, a few youthful poems, a few labored let-
ters, and a biography so mi rand unsatisfactory that it scarcely
gives us any insight into hiscl ter, are all that remain of Henry
FLOOD’S REPLY TO GRATTAN’S INVECTIVE.
From a Speech delivered in the Irish Parliament in 1783.
I rise, sir, in defense of an injured character; and when
I recall the aspersions of that night,—while I despise them,
they shall be recalled only to be disproved. As I have en-
deavored to defend the rights of this country for four-and-
twenty years, I hope the house will permit me to defend my
reputation. My public life, sir, has been divided into three
parts—and it has been dispatched by three epithets. The
first part, that which preceded Lord Harcourt’s adminis-
tration; the next, which passed between Lord Harcourt’s
and Lord Carlisle’s; and the third, which is subsequent.
The first has a summary justice done it by being said to be
“intemperate,’—the second is treated in like manner by
being said to be “ venal,”—and the conduct of the third is
said to be that of an “incendiary.” .. .
HENRY FLOOD. 1213
With respect to that period of my life which is
dispatched by the word “intemperate,” I beg the house
would consider the difficult situation of public men if such
is to be their treatment. That period takes in a number of
administrations, in which the public were pleased to give
me the sentence of their approbation. Sir, it includes, for
I wish to speak to facts, not to take it up on epithets, the
administrations of the Duke of Bedford, Lord Halifax, the
Duke of Northumberland, Lord Hertford, and Lord Town-
shend. Now, sir, as to the fact of “intemperate,” I wish to
state to you how that stands, and let the honorable mem-
bers see how plain a tale will put him down. Of those five
administrations there were three to which I was so far
from giving an “ intemperate ” opposition, that I could not
be said in any sense of the word to oppose them at all—I
mean the three first. I certainly voted against the secre-
tary (Mr. Hamilton) of the day, but oftener voted with
him. In Lord Hertford’s administration I had attained
a certain view, and a decided opinion of what was fit in
my mind to be done for Ireland. I had fixed on three great
objects of public utility. I endeavored to attain them with
that spirit and energy with which it is my character and
nature to act and to speak,—as I must take the disadvan-
tages of my nature, I will take the advantages of it too,—
they were resisted by that administration. What was the
consequence? A conflict arose between that administration
and me: but that conflict ought not to be called opposition
on my part; no, it ought rather to be called opposition on
theirs. I was the propounder—they resisted my proposi-
tions. This may be called a conflict with, not an opposi-
tion to that administration. What were those three great
objects? One was to prove that the constitution of parlia-
ment in this kingdom did still exist; that it had not been
taken away by the law of Poynings, but that it was by an
infamous perversion of that statute by which the constitu-
tion had suffered. The second was the establishment of a
constitutional military force in superaddition to that of
a standing army,—the only idea that ever occurred in
England, or in any free country in Europe, was that of a
constitutional militia. The third great object I took up,
as necessary for Ireland, was a law for limiting the dura-
tion of parliaments in this country. These were three
1214 IRISH LITERATURE.
great, salutary, and noble projects, worthy of an enlarged
mind. I pursued them with ardor, I do not deny it, but I
did not pursue them with intemperance. I am sure I did
not appear to the public to do so, since they gave my exer-
tions many flattering testimonies of their approbation;
there is another proof, however, that I was not “ intemper-
ate”—I was successful. Intemperance and miscarriage
are apt to go together, but temperance and success are as-
sociated by nature. This is my plain history with regard
to that period. The clumsiness or virulence of invective
may require to be sheathed in a brilliancy of figures, but
plain truth and plain sense are best delivered in simple
language.
I now come to that period in which Lord Harcourt gov-
erned, and which is stigmatized by the word “venal.” If
every man who accepts an office is “ venal ” and an “ apos-
tate,” I certainly cannot acquit myself of the charge, nor
is it necessary. If it be a crime universally, let it be uni-
versally ascribed; but it is not fair that one set of men
should be treated by that honorable member as great
friends and lovers of their country, notwithstanding they
are in office, and another set of men should be treated as
enemies and apostates. What is the truth? Everything of
this sort depends on the principles on which office is taken,
and on which it is retained. With regard to myself let
no man imagine I am preaching up a doctrine for my own
convenience; there is no man in this house less concerned
in the propagation of it. . . . I beg leave to state briefly
the manner in which I accepted the vice-treasureship :'—
It was offered me in the most honorable manner, with
an assurance not only of being a placeman for my own
profit, but a misister for the benefit of my country. My
answer was that I thought in a constitution such as the
British an intercourse between the prince and the subject
ought to be honorable. The circumstance of being a min-
ister ought to redound to a man’s credit, though I lament
to say it often happens otherwise; men in office frequently
forget those principles which they maintained before. I
mentioned the public principles which I held, and added,
if consistently with them, from an atom of which I could
not depart, I could be of service to his majesty’s govern-
ment, I was ready to render it. I now speak in the pres-
HENRY FLOOD. 1215
ence of men who know what I say. After the appointment
had come over to this kingdom, I sent in writing to the
chief governor that I could not accept it unless on my own
stipulations. Thus, sir, I took office... .
In Lord Harcourt’s administration what did I do? I
had the board of commissioners reduced to one, by which
a saving of twenty thousand pounds a year was effected. I
went further, I insisted on having every altered money bill
thrown out, and privy-council bills not defended by the
crown. Thus, instead of giving sanction to the measures
I had opposed, my conduct was in fact to register my prin-
ciples in the records of the court—to make the privy coun-
cil witness the privileges of a parliament and give final
energy to the tenets with which I commenced my public
life. The right honorable member who has censured me,
in order to depreciate that economy, said “that we had
swept with the feather of economy the pens and paper off
our table: ” a pointed and brilliant expression which is far
from a just argument. This country had no reason to be
ashamed of that species of economy, when the great nation
of Britain had been obliged to descend to a system as mi-
nute; it was not my fault if infinitely more was not done.
If administrations were wrong on the absentee tax, they
were wrong with the prejudices of half a century—they
were wrong with every great writer than has treated of
Trish affairs. . . . To show that I was not under any undue
influence of office, when the disposition of the house was
made to alter on the absentee tax, and when the adminis-
tration yielded to the violence of parliament, I appeal to
the consciousness and public testimony of many present
whether I did veer and turn with the secretary, or whether
I did not make a manly stand in its favor. After having
pledged myself to the public I would rather break with a
million of administrations than retract; I not only adhered
to that principle, but, by a singular instance of exertion,
found it a second time under the consideration of this
house. . . .
The third, commencing with Lord Carlisle’s administra-
tion, in which my conduct has been slandered as “ incen-
diary.” There was not a single instance in which the hon-
orable gentleman (Mr. Grattan) did not co-operate. If I
am an incendiary, I will gladly accept of the society of
1216 IRISH LITERATURE.
that right honorable member, under the same appellation.
If I was an incendiary it was for moving what the parlia-
ments of both kingdoms have since given their sanction
to. If that is to be an incendiary, God grant that I may
continue so. Now, sir, I do not know that my dismission
from office was thought any disgrace to me; I do not think
this house or the nation thought me dishonored. The first
day I declared those sentiments for which I was dismissed
I thought it was my honor. Many very honorable and
worthy gentlemen, one of whom is since dead, except in the
grateful memory of his country—one who thought me so
little the character of an “ incendiary,” that he crossed the
house, together with others, to congratulate me on the
honor of my conduct, and to embrace me in open parlia-
ment. At that moment I surely stood free of the imputa-
tion of an “incendiary!” But this beloved character (Mr.
Burgh), over whose life nor over whose grave envy never
hovered—he was a man wishing ardently to serve his coun-
try, but not to monopolize the service—wishing to partake
and to communicate the glory of what passed !—He gave
me in his motion for “ free-trade,” a full participation of
the honor. On a subsequent occasion he said,—I remem-
ber the words well, they are traced with a pencil of grati-
tude on my heart,—“ that I was a man whom the most
lucrative office of the land had never warped in point of
integrity.’ The words were marked, and I am sure I
repeat them fairly; they are words I should be proud to
have inscribed on my tomb. Consider the man from whom
they came; consider the situation of the persons concerned,
and it adds and multiplies the honor. My noble friend—I
beg pardon, he did not live to be ennobled by patent, but
he was ennobled by nature—was thus situated: he had
found himself obliged to surrender his office and enter into
active opposition to that government from whom he had
obtained it; at the same time I remained in office, though
under the circumstance of having sent in my resignation.
That he did not know, but, careless to everything save
honor and justice, he gave way to those sentiments of his
heart, and he approved.
I have reccived this day from the united delegates of the
province of Connaught an approbation, “ WITH ONE VOICE,”
as they emphatically express it, of that conduct that has
HENRY FLOOD. 1217
been slandered by the epithet of “incendiary.” An assem-
blage not one of whom I have ever seen, not one of whom
I have even a chance of doing a service for, and, therefore,
could have nothing in contemplation but the doing an act
of justice. Sir, I had a similar expression of approbation
from another province—Ulster. Therefore, if I am an in-
cendiary, all Connaught are incendiaries—all Ulster are
incendiaries! With two provinces at my back, and the
parliament of England in my favor (by the act of re-
muneration), I think I need not fear this solitary accusa-
tion... .
It has been said by the right honorable member (Mr.
Grattan) that “I am an outcast of government and of my
prince; ” it was certainly, sir, an extraordinary transac-
tion, but it likewise happened to Mr. Pultney and the Duke
of Devonshire; therefore it is not a decisive proof of a
reprobated or factious character, and it is the first time
it has been mentioned to disadvantage. . . . Sir, you have
heard the accusation of the right honorable member. I ap-
peal to you if I am that supposititious character he has
drawn, if I am that character in any degree. I do not
deprecate your justice, but I demand it. I exhort you for
the honor of this house, I exhort you for the honor of your
country, to rid yourselves of a member who would be un-
worthy to sit among you.
A DEFENSE OF THE VOLUNTEERS.
From a Speech delivered in the Irish Parliament in 1783.
Sir, I have not mentioned the bill as being the measure of
any set of men or body of men whomsoever. I am as free
to enter into the discussion of the bill as any gentleman in
this house, and with as little prepossession of what I shall
propose. I prefer it to the house as the bill of my right
honorable friend who seconded me,—will you receive it
from us?
(After a short pause Mr. Flood continued): In the last
parliament it was ordered “That leave be given for the
more equal representation of the people in parliament; ”
7
1218 IRISH LITERATURE.
this was in the Duke of Portland’s administration, an ad-
ministration the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Yelver-
ton) professes to admire, and which he will not suspect of
overturning the constitution.
I own, from the turn which has been given to this ques-
tion, I enter on it with the deepest anxiety; armed with the
authority of a precedent I did not think any one would be
so desperate as to give such violent opposition to the sim-
ple introduction of a bill. I now rise for the first time to
speak to the subject, and I call on every man, auditor or
spectator, in the house or in the galleries, to remember
this truth,—that if the volunteers are introduced in this
debate, it is not I who do so. The right honorable gentle-
man says, “If the volunteers have approved it he will op-
pose it;” but I say I bring it in as a member of this house
supported by the powerful aid of my right honorable friend
(Mr. Brownlow) who sits behind me. We bring it in as
members of parliament, never mentioning the volunteers.
I ask you, will you receive it from us—from us, your mem-
bers, neither intending by anything within doors or with-
out to intimidate or overawe you? I ask, will you—will
you receive it as our bill, or will you conjure up a military
phantom of interposition to affright yourselves?
I have not introduced the volunteers, but if they are
aspersed I will defend their character against all the
world. By whom were the commerce and the constitution
of this country recovered ?—By the volunteers!
Why did not the right honorable gentleman make a
declaration against them when they lined our streets—
when parliament passed through the ranks of those vir-
tuous armed men to demand the rights of an insulted na-
tion? Are they different men at this day, or is the right
honorable gentleman different? He was then one of their
body, he is now their accuser! He who saw the streets
lined, who rejoiced, who partook in their glory, is now their
accuser! Are they less wise, less brave, less ardent in their
country’s cause, or has their admirable conduct made him
their enemy? May they not say, We have not changed,
but you have changed? The right honorable gentleman
cannot bear to hear of volunteers; but I will ask him, and
I will have a starling taught to halloo in his ear—Who
HENRY FLOOD. 1219
gave you the free-trade? who got you the free constitution?
who made you a nation? The volunteers!
If they were the men you now describe them, why did
you accept of their service? why did you not then accuse
them? If they were so dangerous, why did you pass
through their ranks with your speaker at your head to
demand a constitution? why did you not then fear the ills
you now apprehend?
ON A COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE.
From a Speech delivered in the British Parliament (1787) in reply
to Mr. Pitt, whose commercial system Flood combated.
One thing at least I think is clear, that France is one
of the last countries in Europe with which you ought to
have engaged; yet by this treaty you will make her the
first, though she has taken care not to make you so. What
is the consequence? She can now do against you what
you cannot retaliate against her. She can use her in-
fluence with Spain—Is she not doing it?—With America—
Is she not doing it?—and in every other country with
which she communicates, to prevent them from entering
into engagements with you. How easily can she prevail
on them to insist upon preliminaries to which you cannot
accede, and yet to which, if you do not accede, they will
not negotiate. What follows? A decline of communica-
tion between you and those powers. And what follows
from that? That what those powers must import from
you they will choose to import indirectly through France
rather than directly from you. Thus for so much she
would become the medium and carrier of your trade, a cir-
cumstance in my mind devoutly to be deprecated. What
is at present your confidence as to America? Is it not that
she must return to you for the sake of that long credit
which France cannot afford to her. But what will be the
operation of this treaty? It will give English credit to
France in the first instance, and in the second France can
give it to America. Thus it will deprive you of your only
advantage as to America, and transfer it to your rival,
who has every other advantage. Thus it will cement the
connection between France and America, and perpetuate
1220 IRISH LITERATURE.
the disconnection between those states and Great Britain,
whilst in Europe it will rivet the confederacy between
France and Spain, and unrivet that between Great Britain
and Portugal, if it does not even add it as a link to the
chain of the house of Bourbon. As to Ireland, what is its
policy? It shows more favor to France than was shown
the other day to Ireland. And what does it do next? It
sends France into Ireland to colonize in her towns, to line
her western coast and the Atlantic, to become the medium
between certain classes of her people and America, to en-
courage emigration in peace and separation in war.
Now turn your eyes to the East. What did France do in
1748? She made the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the day
after she fortified in America. The day after this treaty
she will fortify in Asia. What will follow? If she cannot
rival your cotton manufacture in Europe, she will undo it
in Asia. She will admit Asiatic cottons free from duty.
She can do it without even an infraction of this treaty, for
even that has not been guarded against by your negotia-
tor. But she cannot do it without the ruin of your Euro-
pean manufactures. Would not this be an acceptable
measure in Asia, I ask? If she were to contend with you
for Bengal (which one day she will), could she do it upon
a better foundation? With her intrigues among the Asi-
atic powers; with the connivance or co-operation of the
Dutch, recruited and fortified as she then would be, might
not your Asiatic Empire tremble? Is it so secure in its
nature as to bid defiance to assault? Or is any man so
credulous as to believe that to the glory of having stripped
you of America, she would not wish to accumulate the re-
nown of depriving you of Asia too? I am no reviler of
France. I honor her genius, I honor her activity; but
whilst I honor France I am devoted to Great Britain.
Time and circumstances have made us rivals; let us be as
generous rivals as you will; but let us not be counterfeiting
friends. ...
No man glories more than I do in the mighty exertions
of this great nation in the last war, whilst no man more
regrets the principle and the event of it. But I am not so
credulous as to believe that our failure has rendered us
more formidable to France. On the other hand, I see no
reason to despond. For if Queen Elizabeth, amidst all
her distresses, could place this country at the head of
HENRY FLOOD. 1221
Europe, as the common friend to justice and as the common
enemy to oppression; if Oliver Cromwell, with the stain
of usurper on his head, could continue this kingdom in the
situation in which it had been placed by Elizabeth; and
if both of them could do this without the aid of America,
I do not see why we should despond now.
With these glories before my eyes, and remembering how
nobly they have been augmented within these hundred
years, I stand in astonishment at the preamble of this
treaty, which calls on us, in a tone of triumph, to reverse
the system of that century. I cannot help asking myself
who these men are who thus summon a mighty nation to
renounce its honors and to abdicate its superiority. But
be they who they may, if they ask me to depose Great Bri-
tain, and to put France into the throne of Europe, I an-
swer, No. If they ask me to repeal the revolution, I
answer, No. Or the liberty that came with it, or the glory
that followed it, or the maxims of government that have
cherished and adorned them both, I continue to answer by
a reiterated negative. I confide that you will do the same,
and I conclude.
ELLEN FORRESTER.
(1828—1888,)
Miss MaGENnis was born in Clones, County Monaghan, about
1828. Her father was a schoolmaster, and her brother was also a
writer of verse. When a girl she settled in England, where she
married Mr. Forrester, a stone mason, and three of her children
became poets. She wrote for The Nation and for several English
newspapers, and published two volumes of verse, ‘Simple Strains
and ‘Songs of the Rising Nation.’ She died at Salford, England,
Jan, 6, 1883.
THE WIDOW’S MESSAGE TO HER SON.
“Remember, Denis, all I bade you say;
Tell him we’re well and happy, thank the Lord;
But of our troubles, since he went away,
You ’ll mind, avick, and never say a word!
Of cares and troubles, sure, we ve all our share;
The finest summer isn’t always fair.
“Tell him the spotted heifer calved in May;
She died, poor thing; but that you needn’t mind;
Nor how the constant rain destroyed the hay;
But tell him God to us was ever kind;
And when the fever spread the country o’er,
His mercy kept the ‘sickness’ from our door.
“Be sure you tell him how the neighbors came
And cut the corn; and stored it in the barn;
*T would be as well to mention them by name—
Pat Murphy, Ned M’Cabe, and James M’Carn,
And big Tim Daly from behind the hill;
But say agra1—O say I miss him still!
“They came with ready hands our toil to share—
°T was then I missed him most—my own right hand;
I felt, although kind hearts were round me there,
The kindest heart beat in a foreign land.
Strong hand! brave heart! O severed far from me
By many a weary league of shore and sea!
“ And tell him she was with us—he’ll know who:
Mavourneen,? hasn't she the winsome eyes?
1 Agradh, O love! rr taal my darling.
ELLEN FORRESTER. 1223
The darkest, deepest, brightest, bonniest blue,
I ever saw except in summer skies.
And such black hair! it is the blackest hair
That ever rippled over neck so fair.
“Tell him old Pincher fretted many a day
And moped, poor dog, ’t was well he didn’t die;
Crouched by the roadside, how he watched the way,
And sniffed the travelers as they passed him by—
Hail, rain, or sunshine, sure ’t was all the same,
He listened for the foot that never came.
“Tell him the house is lonesome-like, and cold,
The fire itself seems robbed of half its light;
But maybe ’t is my eyes are growing old,
And things look dim before my failing sight:
For all that, tell him ’t was myself that spun
The shirts you bring, and stitched them every one.
“Give him my blessing, morning, noon, and night;
Tell him my prayers are offered for his good,
That he may keep his Maker still in sight,
And firmly stand, as his brave father stood,
True to his name, his country, and his God,
Faithful at home, and steadfast still abroad.”
GEORGE FOX.
Very little is known about the life of George Fox beyond the fact
that he was born in Belfast ; was graduated from Trinity College,
Dublin, B.A. 1842, M.A. 1847, and came to America in 1848.
He is well known, however, as the translator of ‘The County of
Mayo’ from the Irish. His translation first appeared in a review
of Hardiman’s ‘Irish Minstrelsy’ in The Dublin University Maga-
zine. The original is printed in the first named. Hardiman says
that it was known sometimes as ‘The Lament of Thomas Flavell,’
having been composed by a seventeenth-century bard of that name.
It is one of the most popular songs of the try of the West of
Ireland, and was, he says, combined with one of the sweetest of
Irish melodies—the very soul of plaintive Irish music.
THE COUNTY OF MAYO.
From the Irish of Thomas Flavell.
On the deck of Patrick Lynch’s boat I sat in woful plight,
Through my sighing all the weary day and weeping all the
night.
Were it not that full of sorrow from my people forth I go,
By the blesséd sun, ’t is royally I’d sing thy praise, Mayo.
When I dwelt at home in plenty, and my gold did much
abound,
In the company of fair young maids the Spanish ale went
round.
?T is a bitter change from those gay days that now I’m forced
to go,
And must leave my bones in Santa Cruz, far from my own
Mayo.
They are altered girls in Irral now; ’t is proud they re grown
and high,
With their hair-bags and their top-knots—for I pass their
buckles by.
But it’s little now I heed their airs, for God will have it so,
That I must depart for foreign lands, and leave my sweet
Mayo.
1224
GEORGE FOX. 1225
T is my grief that Patrick Loughlin is not Earl in Irrul
still
And that Brian Duff no longer rules as Lord upon the Hill;
And that Colonel Hugh MacGrady should be lying dead and
low,
And I sailing, sailing swiftly from the county of Mayo.
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS.
(1740—1818.)
“WHETHER ‘Junius’ or not, Sir Philip Francis was,” says Mr.
Leslie Stephen, ‘‘ a man of great ability and of unflagging industry.”
He was born in Dublin in 1740. He was the son of Dr. cis, the
translator of Horace. When his father removed to England he was
ten years old and he received his education at the Academy under his
father and at St. Paul’s School, London. Here he had for a school-
fellow, Henry 8. Woodfall, afterward the printer of the ' Letters
of Junius.’ In 1756 Francis became a clerk in the Secretary of
Btate's office. His ability attracted the notice of Mr. Pitt, who
succeeded Lord Holland, and in 1758 he was on Pitt's recommendation
appointed secretary to General Bligh, and was present at the capture
of Cherbourg.
In 1760, through the same patronage, he became secretary to the
Earl of Kinnoul, and accompanied that nobleman on his embassy to
Lisbon. In 1763 he obtained a considerable post in the War office,
which he resigned in 1772 in consequence of a difference with Lord
Barrington. The greater part of this year was spent by Francis in
8 visit to the Continent, during which he had a long audience with
the Pope, a curious account of which in his own handwriting is
among the manuscripts in posseasion of his grandson. On his re-
turn he was appointed by Lord North one of the civil members of
Council for the government of Bengal, and sailed for India in June,
1778. His conduct at the Council-board was marked by a constant
and violent opposition to the policy of the Governor-General, War-
ren Hastings, which resulted in a duel with the latter, in which Fran-
cis was dangerously wounded. The resignation of his post, worth
£10,000 ($50,000) a Bert, naturally followed.
He returned to England in 1781, and shortly after was elected
Member of Parliament for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. In the
House he supported Whig principles, joining the Opposition, then led
by Fox. He actively promoted the proceedings which ended in the
impeachment of Hastings, and afforded valuable information and
advice to Burke and the other managers of the great trial. In 1807
he finally retired from Parliament. His speeches while a Member,
notwithstanding a defect of utterance caused by an over-sensibility of
temperament, are said to have been remarkable for refinement, simpli-
city, energy, and point. In 1806 he was created a Knight of the Bath,
and in 1816, when the public curiosity on the subject of the ' Letters
of Junius’ had greatly subsided, attention was directed toward Sir
Philip Francis, in consequence of the appearance of a pamphlet by
Mr. John Taylor, in which strong evidence was adduced as to his being
their author. Francis denied the authorship in a somewhat equivo-
cal way, and in 1818, while the question was still hotly discussed,
he died in hisseventy-ninth year. He published a number of politi-
cal speeches, ‘ Remarks on the tla ‘Warren Hastings,’ ‘ Letters
1221
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS. 1227
on the East India Company,’ ‘ Reflections on the Currency,’ etc.,
which were only of temporary interest and are now forgotten.
The secret of the authorship of the ‘ Letters of Junius,’ like that
of the personality of the ‘ Man in the Iron Mask,’ has never really been
penetrated. Although more than a century has elapsed since their
publication; although volumes have been written on the subject, and
the most prying curiosity and industrious ingenuity have been at
work to collect evidence on the point, we have as yet no positive
proof to decide the question who was their real author. More than
ifty names of eminent men living at the period have been brought
forward and advocated at various times, including those of Lord
Chatham, Burke, Gibbon, Grattan, Pownall, Rich, Horne Tooke,
Wilkes, and more especially Lord George Sackville, but there can
be little doubt that the claim of authorship for Sir Philip Francis
still remains the strongest. The arguments for this view may be
briefly stated as: his absence ona journey to the Continent coincides
with an interruption in the letters ; his departure for India with a
high appointment, with their cessation ; his receiving that appoint-
ment without any apparent cause, just after leaving the War office ;
his station in the War office, with all details of which ‘‘Junius ” is go
familiar; his knowledge of speeches not reported; coincidences of
thought and expression between passages of the lettersand of speeches
of Lord Chatham, reports of which had been furnished by Francis,
and with his own speeches made after his return from India ; his
being known to be an able pamphleteer ; and, finally, liar
modes of spelling and of correcting the press, and resemblance of
handwriting.
Macaulay deals with the authorship of these letters in his essay
on Warren Hastings in his usually interesting manner. If, as he
supposes, Sir Philip Francis was the author, he certainly had ample
opportunity to realize abroad the meaning of the corruption he had
denounced at home, for, as we have seen, he was in India from 1774
to 1780 as a member of the Council appointed to check Warren
Hastings.
They first appeared in Woodfall’s Public Advertiser at a time of
great political excitement, and were directed against the principal
men of the day connected with the Government, not sparing even
royalty itself. Forty-four bear the signature of ‘‘ Junius,” the
earliest of which is dated Jan. 21, 1769, the last Jan. 21, 1772. In
the latter year they were collected (the collection including also
fifteen letters signed “ Philo-Junius,” really written by the same
Person), revised by ‘‘ Junius,” who added notes, and published by
oodfall, with a Dedication to the English Nation and a Preface
by the author. Another edition was afterward issued, containing
not only the letters of ‘‘ Junius” proper, but also his private letters to
Mr. Woodfall, his correspondence with Wilkes, and other com-
munications to the Advertiser by the same author under different
signatures and relating to different subjects, but all marked with
the same boldness, severity, and passion which characterize the
‘ Letters’ themselves,
Numerous editions have since appeared, among others an enlarged
and improved edition in 1850 in two volumes, edited by Mr. John
1228 IRISH LITERATURE.
‘Wade, who in an essay prefixed makes out a strong case in favor
of the authorship of Sir Philip Francis. A more recent work which
supports the same view is ‘ The Handwriting of Junius Professionall
Investigated by Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert,’ with preface and cok
lateral evidence by the Hon. Edward Twistleton (London, 1871).
TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.
July 8, 1769.
My Lord:
If nature had given you an understanding qualified to
keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart,
she would have made you perhaps the most formidable
minister that ever was employed under a limited monarch
to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the
feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the
dread of punishment, form any bar to the designs of a min-
ister, the people would have too much reason to lament
their condition if they did not find some resource in the
weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty
of Providence, that the completest depravity of the heart
is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind
which counteracts the most favorite principles, and makes
the same man treacherous without art and a hypocrite
without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which
your Grace’s activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were
adopted without skill, should have been conducted with
more than common dexterity.
But truly, my lord, the execution has been as gross a8
the design. By one decisive step you have defeated all the
arts of writing. You have fairly confounded the intrigues
of opposition and silenced the clamor of faction. A dark,
ambiguous system might require and furnish the materials
of ingenious illustration; and, in doubtful measures, the
virulent exaggeration of party must be employed to rouse
and engage the passions of the people. You have now
brought the merits of your administration to an issue on
which every Englishman of the narrowest capacity may
determine for himself. It is not an alarm to the passions,
but a calm appeal to the judgment of the people upon their
own most essential interests. A more experienced minis-
ter would not have hazarded a direct invasion of the first
principles of the constitution before he had made some
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS. 1229
progress in subduing the spirit of the people. With such
@ cause as yours, my lord, it is not sufficient that you have
the court at your devotion, unless you can find means to
corrupt or intimidate the jury. The collective body of the
people form that jury, and from their decision there is but
one appeal.
‘Whether you have talents to support you at a crisis of
such difficulty and danger should long since have been
considered. Judging truly of your disposition, you have
perhaps mistaken the extent of your capacity. Good faith
and folly have so long been received as synonymous terms
that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit,
and every villain fancies himself a man of abilities. It is
the apprehension of your friends, my lord, that you have
drawn some hasty conclusion of this sort, and that a
partial reliance upon your moral character has betrayed
you beyond the depth of your understanding. You have
now carried things too far to retreat. You have plainly
declared to the people what they are to expect from the
continuance of your administration. It is time for your
Grace to consider what you also may expect in return from
their spirit and their resentment.
Since the accession of our most gracious sovereign to
the throne, we have seen a system of government which
may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all
denominations have been employed and dismissed. The
advice of the ablest men in this country has been re-
peatedly called for and rejected; and when the royal dis-
pleasure has been signified to a minister, the marks of it
have usually been proportioned to his abilities and in-
tegrity. The spirit of the favorite had some apparent in-
fluence upon every administration; and every set of minis-
ters preserved an appearance of duration as long as they
submitted to that influence. But there were certain ser-
vices to be performed for the favorite’s security, or to
gratify his resentments, which your predecessors in office
had the wisdom or the virtue not to undertake. The mo-
ment this refractory spirit was discovered, their disgrace
was determined. Lord Chatham, Mr. Grenville, and Lord
Rockingham have successively had the honor to be dis-
missed for preferring their duty as servants of the public
to those compliances which were expected from their sta-
1230 IRISH LITERATURE.
tion. A submissive administration was at last gradually
collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and
connections; and nothing remained but to find a leader
for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my
lord; for thou art the man. Lord Bute found no resource
of dependence or security in the proud, imposing, superi-
ority of Lord Chatham’s abilities, the shrewd, inflexible
judgment of Mr. Grenville, nor in the mild but determined
integrity of Lord Rockingham. His views and situation
required a creature void of all these properties; and he
was forced to go through every division, resolution, compo-
sition, and refinement of political chemistry before he hap-
pily arrived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in your Grace.
Flat and insipid in your retired state; but, brought into
action, you become vitriol again. Such are the extremes
of alternate indolence or fury which governed your whole
administration. Your circumstances with regard to the
people soon becoming desperate, like other honest servants,
you determined to involve the best of masters in the same
difficulties with yourself. We owe it to your Grace’s well-
directed labors that your sovereign has been persuaded to
doubt of the affections of his subjects, and the people to
suspect the virtues of their sovereign at a time when both
were unquestionable.
You have degraded the royal dignity into a base, dishon-
orable competition with Mr. Wilkes; nor had you abilities
to carry even this last contemptible triumph over a private
man without the grossest violation of the fundamental
laws of the constitution and rights of the people. But
these are rights, my lord, which you can no more annihilate
than you can the soil to which they are annexed. The
question no longer turns upon points of national honor and
security abroad, or on the degrees of expedience and pro-
priety of measures at home. It was not inconsistent that
you should abandon the cause of liberty in another coun-
try, which you had persecuted in your own; and, in the
common arts of domestic corruption, we miss no part of Sir
Robert Walpole’s system except his abilities. In this hum-
ble imitative line you might long have proceeded safe and
contemptible. You might probably never have risen to the
dignity of being hated, and even have been despised with
moderation. But it seems you meant to be distinguished ;
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS. 1231
and to a mind like yours there was no other road to fame
but by the destruction of a noble fabric, which you thought,
had been too long the admiration of mankind. The use
you have made of the military force introduced an alarm-
ing change in the mode of executing the laws. The arbi-
trary appointment of Mr. Luttrell invades the foundation
of the laws themselves, as it manifestly transfers the right
of legislation from those whom the people have chosen to
those whom they have rejected. With a succession of such
appointment we may soon see a House of Commons col-
lected, in the choice of which the other towns and counties
of England will have as little share as the devoted county
of Middlesex. .
Yet I trust your Grace will find that the people of this
country are neither to be intimidated by violent measures
nor deceived by refinements. When they see Mr. Luttrell
seated in the House of Commons by mere dint of power,
and in direct opposition to the choice of a whole county,
they will not listen to those subtleties by which every ar-
bitrary exertion of authority is explained into the law and
privilege of Parliament. It requires no persuasion of argu-
ment, but simply the evidence of the senses to convince
them that to transfer the right of election from the col-
lective to the representative body of the people contradicts
all those ideas of a House of Commons which they have re-
ceived from their forefathers, and which they have already,
though vainly perhaps, delivered to their children. The
principles on which this violent measure has been defended
have added scorn to injury, and forced us to feel that we
are not only oppressed, but insulted.
With what force, my lord, with what protection are you
prepared to meet the united detestation of the people of
England? The city of London has given a generous ex-
ample to the kingdom in what manner a king of this coun-
try ought to be addressed; and I fancy, my lord, it is not
yet in your courage to stand between your sovereign and
the addresses of his subjects. The injuries you have done
this country are such as demand not only redress, but ven-
geance. In vain shall you look for protection to that
venal vote which you have already paid for: another must
be purchased; and, to save a minister, the House of Com-
mons must declare themselves not only independent of
1232 IRISH LITERATURE.
their constituents, but the determined enemies of the con-
stitution. Consider, my lord, whether this be an extremity
to which their fears will permit them to advance; or, if
their protection should fail you, how far you are authorized
to rely upon the sincerity of those smiles which a pious
court lavishes without reluctance upon a libertine by pro-
fession. It is not, indeed, the least of the thousand con-
tradictions which attend you, that a man marked to the
world by the grossest violation of all ceremony and de-
corum should be the first servant of a court in which pray-
ers are morality and kneeling is religion.
Trust not too far to appearances, by which your prede-
cessors have been deceived, though they have not been
injured. Even the best of princes may at last discover that
this is a contention in which everything may be lost, but
nothing can be gained ; and as you became minister by acci-
dent, were adopted without choice, trusted without confi-
dence, and continued without favor, be assured that when-
ever an occasion presses you will be discarded without even
the forms of regret. You will then have reason to be
thankful if you are permitted to retire to that seat of
learning which in contemplation of the system of your life,
the comparative purity of your manners, with those of
their high-steward, and a thousand other recommending
circumstances, has chosen you to encourage the growing
virtue of their youth, and to preside over their education.
Whenever the spirit of distributing prebends and bish-
oprics shall have departed from you, you will find that
learned seminary perfectly recovered from the delirium
of an installation, and, what in truth it ought to be, once
more a peaceful scene of slumber and thoughtless medita-
tion. The venerable tutors of the university will no longer
distress your modesty by proposing you for a pattern to
their pupils. The learned dullness of declamation will be
silent; and even the venal muse, though happiest in fiction,
will forget your virtues. Yet for the benefit of the succeed-
ing age I could wish that your retreat might be deferred
until your morals shall happily be ripened to that maturity
of corruption at which the worst examples cease to be con-
tagious. JUNIUS.
WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH.
(1854 —)
NWILLIAM Prroy FRENCH was born at Clooniquin, County Ros-
common, May 1, 1854, and was graduated at Dublin University.
Before becoming an author he was a civil engineer. He is one of
the cleverest of living Irish humorists, and is the author of many
verses, stories, etc., most of which appeared in a small Dublin comic
paper called The Jarvey (now defunct), edited by himself. Some
of his songs have become very popular, and he is also the author of
the ibretts of one or two operas.
THE FIRST LORD LIFTINANT. .
AS RELATED BY ANDREW GERAGHTY, PHILOMATH.
“ Essex,” said Queen Elizabeth, as the two of them sat
at breakwhist in the back parlor of Buckingham Palace,
“ Essex, me haro, I’ve got a job that I think would suit
you. Do you know where Ireland is?”
“I’m no great fist at jografy,” says his lordship, “ but
I know the place you mane. Population, three millions; ex-
ports, emigrants.”
“ Well,” says the Queen, “I’ve been reading the Dublin
Evening Mail and the Telegraft for some time back, and
sorra one o’ me can get at the trooth o’ how things is goin’,
for the leadin’ articles is as conthradictory as if they wor
husband and wife.”
“That ’s the way wid papers all the world over,” says
Essex; “Columbus told me it was the same in Amerikay,
when he was there, abusin’ and conthradictin’ each other
at every turn—it’s the way they make their livin’.
Thrubble you for an egg-spoon.”
“It’s addled they have me betune them,” says the
Queen. “Not a know I know what’s goin’ on. So now,
what I want you to do is to run over to Ireland, like a good
fella, and bring me word how matters stand.”
“Is it me?” says Essex, leppin’ up off his chair. “It’s
not in airnest ye are, ould lady. Sure it’s the hoight of
the London saison. Every one ’s in town, and Shake’s new
1234 IRISH LITERATURE.
fairy piece, ‘ The Midsummer’s Night Mare,’ billed for next
week.”
“ You ’ll go when ye’re tould,” says the Queen, fixin’ him
with her eye, “ if you know which side yer bread ’s buttered
on. See here, now,” says she, seein’ him chokin’ wid
vexation and a slice o’ corned beef, “you ought to be
as pleased as Punch about it, for you’ll be at the top o’
the walk over there as vice-regent representin’ me.”
“T ought to have a title or two,” says Essex, pluckin’ up
abit. “His Gloriosity the Great Panjandhrum, or the like
o' that.”
“How would His Excellency the Lord Liftinant of Ire-
land sthrike you?” says Elizabeth.
“First class,” cries Essex. ‘“Couldn’t be betther; it
doesn’t mean much, but it’s allitherative, and will look
well below the number on me hall door.”
Well, boys, it didn’t take him long to pack his clothes
and start away for the Island o’ Saints. It took him a good
while to get there, though, through not knowin’ the road;
but by means of a pocket compass and a tip to the steward,
he was landed at last contagious to Dalkey Island. Goin’
up to an ould man who was sittin’ on a rock, he took off
his hat, and says he—
“That ’s great weather we ’re havin’? ”
“Good enough for the times that’s in it,” says the ould
man, cockin’ one eye at him.
“ Any divarshun goin’ on?” says Essex.
“Youre a sthranger in these parts, I’m thinkin’,” says
the ould man, “or you ’d know this was a ‘band night’ in
Dalkey.”
“I wasn’t aware of it,” says Essex; “the fact is,” says
he, “I only landed from England just this minute.”
“Ay,” says the ould man bitterly, “it’s little they know
about us over there. I] hould you,” says he, with a slight
thrimble in his voice, “ that the Queen herself doesn’t know
there is to be fireworks in the Sorrento Gardens this night.”
Well, when Essex heard that, he disremembered entirely
he was sent over to Ireland to put down rows and ructions,
and away wid him to see the fun and flirt wid all the pretty
girls he could find. And he found plenty of them—thick
as bees they wor, and each one as beautiful as the day and
the morra. He wrote two letters home next day—one to
WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH. 1235
Queen Elizabeth and the other to Lord Montaigle, a play-
boy like himself. I'll read you the one to the Queen
first :—
“ Dame STHREET, April 16th, 1599.
“Fair ENOHANTRESS,—I wish I was back in London, baskin’ in
your sweet smiles and listenin’ to your melodious voice once more.
got the consignment of men and the post-office order allright. I
was out all the mornin’ lookin’ for the inimy, but sorra a taste of
Hugh O'Neil or his men can I find. A policemin at the corner o'
Nassau Street told me they wor hidin’in Wicklow. SoIlam makin’
up a party to explore the Dargle on Easter Monda’. The girls here
are as ugly as sin, and every minute o’ the day I do be wishin’ it
was your good-lookin’ self I was gazin’ at instead o’ these ignorant
scarecrows. Hopin’ soon to be back at ould England, Iremain your
lovin’ subjec’, Eserx.
sP.8.—I hear Hugh O'Neil was seen on the top of the Donny-
brook tram yesterday mornin’. If I have any luck the head ‘ll
off him before you get this. 5”
The other letter read this way—
‘Dear Monty—This is a great place all out. Come over here if
you want fun. Divil such play-boys ever I seen, and the girle—
oh ! don’t be talkin'—'pon me secret honor you 'll see more love-
liness at a tay and supper ball in Rathmines than there is in the
whole of England. Ned Spenser to send me a love-song to sing
to a young girl who seems taken wid my appearance. Her name ’s
Mary, and she lives in Dunlary, so he oughtent to find it hard. I
hear Hugh O'Neil ’s a terror, and hits a powerful welt, especially
when you ’re not lookin’. If he tries any of his games on wid me,
I'll give him in charge. No brawlin’ for yours truly, Eas
« Regex.”
Well, me bould Essex stopped for odds of six months in
Dublin, purtendin’ to be very busy subjugatin’ the country,
but all the time only losin’ his time and money widout doin’
a hand’s turn, and doin’ his best to avoid a ruction with
“Fighting Hugh.” If a messenger came to tell him that
O’Neil was campin’ out on the North Bull, Essex would up
stick and away for Sandycove, where, after draggin’ the
forty-foot hole, he’d write off to Elizabeth, saying that
“owing to their suparior knowledge of the country, the
dastard foe had once more eluded him.”
The Queen got mighty tired of these, letters, especially
as they always ended with a request to send stamps by
return, and told Essex to finish up his business and not be
makin’ a fool of himself.
1236 IRISH LITERATURE.
“Oh, that ’s the talk, is it,” says Essex; “very well, me
ould sauce-box ” (that was the name he had for her ever
since she gev him the clip on the ear for turnin’ his back
on her), “very well, me ould sauce-box,” says he, “I'll
write off to O’Neil this very minute, and tell him to send
in his lowest terms for peace at ruling prices.”
Well, the threaty was a bit of a one-sided one—the terms
being—
1. Hugh O’Neil to be King of Great Britain.
2. Lord Essex to return to London and remain there as
Viceroy of England.
3. The O’Neil family to be supported by Government,
with free passes to all theaters and places of entertain-
ment.
4, The London markets to buy only from Irish dealers.
5. All taxes to be sent in stamped envelope, directed to
H. O'Neil, and marked “private.” Checks crossed and
made payable to H. O’Neil. Terms cash.
Well, if Essex had had the sense to read through this
threaty he’d have seen it was of too graspin’ a nature
to pass with any sort of a respectable sovereign, but he
was that mad he just stuck the document in the pocket
of his pot-metal overcoat, and away wid him hot foot for
England.
“Ts the Queen widin?” says he to the butler, when he
opened the door o’ the palace. His clothes were that dirty
and disorthered wid travelin’ all night, and his boots that
muddy, that the butler was for not littin’ him in at the first
go off, so says he very grand: “ Her Meejesty is abow stairs
and can’t be seen till she ’s had her breakwhist.”
“Tell her the Lord Liftinant of Ireland desires an enter-
view,” says Essex.
“ Oh, beg pardon, me lord,” says the butler, steppin’ to
one side, “I didn’t know ’t was yourself was in it; come
inside, sir; the Queen ’s in the dhrawin’-room.”
Well, Essex leps up the stairs and into the dhrawin’-
room wid him, muddy boots and all; but not a sight of
Elizabeth was to be seen.
“ Where ’s your missis? ” says he to one of the maids-of-
honor that was dustin’ the chimbley-piece.
“She’s not out of her bed yet,” says the maid with a toss
of her head; “ but if you write your message on the slate
WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH. 1287
beyant, Ill see ”—but before she had finished, Essex was
up the second flight and knockin’ at the Queen’s bedroom
door.
“Is that the hot wather? ” says the Queen.
“No, it’s me,—Essex. Can you see me?”
“ Faith, I can’t,” says the Queen. “ Hould on till I draw
the bed-curtains. Come in now,” says she, “and say your
say, for I can’t have you stoppin’ long—you young Lu-
tharian.”
“ Bedad, yer Majesty,” says Essex, droppin’ on his knees
before her (the delutherer he was), “small blame to me if
I am a Lutharian, for you have a face on you that would
charm a bird off a bush.”
“Hould your tongue, you young reprobate,” says the
Queen, blushin’ up to her curl-papers wid delight, “and
tell me what improvements you med in Ireland.”
“ Faith, I taught manners to O’Neil,” cries Essex.
“He had a bad masther then,” says Elizabeth, lookin’
at his dirty boots; “couldn’t you wipe yer feet before ye
desthroyed me carpets, young man?”
“Oh, now,” says Essex, “is it wastin’ me time shufflin’
about on a mat you ’d have me, when I might be gazin’ on
the loveliest faymale the world ever saw?”
“ Well,” says the Queen, “I 11 forgive you this time, as
you ye been so long away, but remimber in future that
Kidderminster isn’t oilcloth. Tell me,” says she, “ ig West-
land Row Station finished yet?”
“ There’s a side wall or two wanted yet, I believe,” says
Essex.
“What about the Loop Line?” says she.
“Oh, they ’re gettin’ on with that,” says he, “ only some
people think the girders a disfigurement to the city.”
“Ts there any talk about that esplanade from Sandycove
to Dunlary?”
“There ’s talk about it, but that’s all,” says Essex;
“%t would be an odious fine improvement to house property,
and I hope they ’I] see to it soon.”
“Sorra much you seem to have done, beyant spendin’ me
men and me money. Let’s have a look at that threaty I see
stickin’ out o’ your pocket.”
Well, when the Queen read the terms of Hugh O’Neil
she just gev him one look, an’ jumpin’ from off the bed,
1238 IRISH LITERATURE.
put her head out of the window, and called out to the
policeman on duty—
“ Is the Head below?”
“I tell him you want him, ma’am,” says the police-
man.
“Do,” says the Queen. “Hello,” says she, as a slip 0’
paper dhropped out o’ the dispatches. “What’s this?
“Lines to Mary.’ Ho! ho! me gay fella, that’s what
you ve been up to, is it?”
“ Mrs, Brady 'g
A widow lady,
And she has a charmin’ ter I adore,
I went to court
And her mother boope Te estar
er mother keeps a little
She 's such a darlin’
She 's like a starlin’
And in love with her I’m gettin’ more and more,
Her name is Mary,
She ’s from Dunlary ;
And her mother keeps a little candy-store. ”
“That settles it,” says the Queen. “Tt’s the jailer
you ’Il serenade next.”
When Essex heard that, he thrimbled so much that the
button of his cuirass shook off and rowled under the
dhressin’-table.
“ Arrest that man,” says the Queen, when the Head-
Constable came to the door; “arrest that thrater,” says
she, “and never let me set eyes on him again.”
And indeed she never did, and soon after that he met
with his death from the skelp of an axe he got when he was
standin’ on Tower Hill.
ALICE FURLONG.
(1875 —)
ALIcE FURLONG was born about 1875 in County Dublin. She is
a sister of Mary Furlong (g. v.). Alice began writing poetry in
1893. Her first appeared in The Irish Monthly, the editor of
which has been her constant friend. She has contributed poems to
many magazines and newspapers, and her firat volume of poems,
‘Roses and Rue,’ was published by Mr. Elkin Matthews in 1898.
It has attracted much attention from the leading critical reviews,
and her work has been much praised for ite deli , pathos, and
music. She is the author of three novels and many short stories.
THE TREES.
These be God’s fair high palaces,
Walled with fine leafen trellises,
Interstarred with the warm and luminous azure;
Sunlights run laughing through,
And rains and honey-dew
Scatter pale pearls at every green embrasure.
The tangled twist and twine
Of His soaring staircases have mosses fine
For emerald pavement, and each leafy chamber
Is atmosphered with amber.
Athwart the mellow air
The twinkling threads of gossamer
Shimmer and shine
In many a rainbow line.
The chaffinch is God's little page.
O joyant vassalage!
“You will! You will!” he saith the whole day long,
In sweet monotonous song:
Poised on the window-sills of outmost leaves
He watches where the tremulous sunlight weaves
Its golden webbing over the palpitant grass,
While the Summer butterfly, winged of the blue-veined snow,
Floats by on aerial tides as clear as glass;
Like a fairy ship with its delicate sails ablow.
From the break of morn,
Herein the blackbird is God’s courtier,
With gold tongue ever astir,
1
IRISH LITERATURE.
Piping and praising
On his beakéd horn.
To do his Seigneur duty
In mellow fluency and dulcet phrasing,
In peans of passing beauty;
As a chanting priest,
Chanting his matins in the wane o’ the night,
While slow great winds of vibrant light
Sweep up the lilied East.
The dumb thing is God’s guest,
And ever tired creature seeking rest;
The sheep, grown weary browsing,
The cattle, drouthy with heat,
One after one, lagging on listless feet,
Seek the green shadow of God’s pleasant housing;
While the thousand wingéd wights of bough and air
Do find God's palace fair!
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